


Send us a Blindfold, Send us a Blade

by Trinary



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Cults, Dehumanization, Dystopia, Empurata, Experimental Typography, Functionist Cybertron is not a nice place okay, Functionist Universe (Transformers), Gay Robots, M/M, Mind Control, Post-Canon, Seeker Trines, Slavery, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-09-02 13:40:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 64,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20276803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinary/pseuds/Trinary
Summary: Post-Unicron, Thundercracker heads to New Cybertron to schmooze with the rich and famous. Movies need funding, after all. What he expects are boring parties and a lot of paperwork. What he finds is an impossible version of his dead trinemate, kept like a prize in a towers estate. They need to get off-planet as quickly as possible, but with the enforcers hot on their trail, the only one who can help is a certain Megatron-obsessed empuratee… And Damus of Tarn has his own plans.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It’s finally time to post my fic for the TF Big Bang 2019! I can’t wait to read the stories everyone worked so hard on. :D Thanks to Ptero for organizing the event and herding us all like the cats we are. 
> 
> Special thanks goes to the wonderful Arco, my TFBB artist partner who illustrated this fic! Check out their amazing art on [twitter](https://twitter.com/9arco95)!

Send us a blindfold  
Send us a blade  
Tell the survivors  
Help is on the way  
[Blindness — Metric](https://youtu.be/Xd8SwasUWDM)

Thundercracker sips his drink and looks out over the crowd. It’s easy, being as he towers head and shoulders above the rest of the partygoers. That’s not even counting his wings.

The venue’s exquisite. That’s the word you’re supposed to use for parties like this, _exquisite_. Tables groan beneath the weight of pyramid-stacked energon gels and enough fancy drinks to supply an army. It’s everything a party should be, at least according to Skywarp’s long-ago party ranking system: big, glittery, and loud. A clean three-pointer. It misses out on the bonus points for debauchery, but nothing’s perfect. The people are even fancier than the venue or the engex: brightly painted upper-caste mechs with sleek racing and scientific altmodes, shining holovid stars, and half of Primax’s champion cube team.

It’s the kind of swank bash that hasn’t been held on Old Cybertron since before the war and won’t happen there ever again. The kind that—even fifty thousand vorns ago when they’d been happening—Thundercracker never would’ve been invited to, on account of being some dumb nobody flightframe. New Cybertron isn’t any looser with the rules. He’d only barely secured this invitation, and that’s only because he’d made a name for himself in the interplanetary film industry.

It’s also a total bust.

He’d had high hopes for New Cybertron. He really did. The second that New Cybertron had popped out of a parallel universe—he’s still not exactly sure how that happened, but the Lost Light was involved, so it’s probably not worth asking—Earth had clamored to open trade lines just as quickly as New Cybertron realized it was alone in a hostile galaxy. As the only currently-living cybertronian director with any clout to his name, half of Earth’s film studios had teamed up to send him over as a goodwill ambassador, make nice with the right people, and secure distribution of their libraries. It helps that _Starscream: the Movie _did pretty well on last year’s award circuit (_The Chuckles Story_ lags by comparison, but they can’t all be winners).

The moment he’d come through the spacebridge he’d been up to his optics in invitations. He’d thought it would be easy. He’d thought he had it in the _bag. _He’d buffed up all nice and shiny, swanned into the towers on Decanter’s invitation—Decanter’s supposedly _the_ guy to know in media, used to be information minister for the last government or something, but whatever, Thundercracker knows a euphemism when he hears one—and been welcomed in.

It’s all gone downhill from there.

It’s not a disaster so as you’d notice. He isn’t Skywarp. He hasn’t broken anything, started a fight with any fancy nobles, or gotten sloppy overcharged on the free engex. It’s subtler than that. When he tries to bring up Earth or his work with the other guests, all he gets are nods, smiles, and vague noises of appreciation. No one listens. Their minds aren’t on his words—they’re on his wings. Bright aristocratic optics track their every twitch and flutter, each resettled plate and flick of aileron. Their attention crawls over him like greasy fingerprints. The situation is all too clear: embossed invitation from Decanter or not, he’s not a guest. He’s an ornament.

He hadn’t remembered about New Cybertron and flightframes until he’d arrived. The thing about them is: they don’t have any.

Well, they do. _Sort of._ What few flight-capable frames exist are low-speed and low-altitude, clumsy civilian skimmers with the range and engine power of a golf cart. There are no warframes, no seekers, no bombers. There are especially no shuttles, satellites, or other spaceworthy alts. No cold constructs walk the streets. What happened to them is something he’s never been able to get a clear answer on: _deportation, mode recalls, decommissioning, obsolescence._ None of the options seem… Good. Especially not with the Functionists at the helm. Again, he knows euphemisms when he hears them.

If Old Cybertron’s war was a rolling disaster, at least it was equal opportunity.

It’s still difficult to get his head around what New Cybertron _is_. A quantum duplicate split tens of thousands of vorns in the past, then displaced into their own universe hardly a year ago. Their world but not; the same place with a different history. It nags at him to have whole classes of people just… Missing. Dead, or never made. He tries not to think of what must have happened to his counterpart self. Or Skywarp’s. Or anyone’s. Never mind the lack of flightframes, the weirdest thing about New Cybertron is running into the doubles of people he knows. Like, he’s pretty sure that’s Blurr and Mirage over by the bar even if the colors aren’t quite right, which is a trip and a half because _Blurr and Mirage are both dead_. It’s messing with his processor.

He wishes he was back on Earth with Marissa and Buster. He’d wanted to bring Buster along—let her turn on the charm for all these deals he isn’t making—but Marissa had pointed out _what would she eat_, and _where would she sleep_, and if he’s honest space is no place for a little dog, even if he _did_ make her an adorable spacesuit. Marissa had said she’d be happier napping in a patch of sun on the porch. Thundercracker has to admit she was right. He knows _he’d_ rather be napping in the sun right now.

He doesn’t have the patience to be stared at all night. He can’t even enjoy it for the five kliks Starscream might have, right before he started plotting how to kill everyone in the room. Sooner or later one of the guests will get brave—or drunk—and try to touch his wings. Then he’ll get arrested for knocking a hole in some fragile aristocrat, and so much for getting anything done then. Frag it, he may as well pull a Skywarp, drink his weight in high grade, and ditch the party for something more fun. There must be _something_ on this planet worth doing.

Decanter claps a hand between Thundercracker’s wings, all bright joviality. “Thundercracker, there you are!”

The unexpected impact lights up all Thundercracker’s dormant combat subsystems. The fragile stem of the engex flute nearly snaps between his fingers. It’s a near thing that he doesn’t knock Decanter’s head off. In the nanoklik it takes to get his systems under control, he pastes a smile on his face and turns. Maybe this is still salvageable.

“Minister Decanter,” Thundercracker says. “It’s a very nice party.”

“Please, just call me Decanter.” Decanter seems to notice nothing amiss. He waves the compliment away. “It’s nothing, really. Only a trifle. I’m sure you’ve seen much more exciting things in your travels across the universe—it can’t possibly impress you.” It’s the sort of thing upper-plates mechs say when they mean, _Yes, it is extremely impressive, isn’t it?_

Thundercracker can’t say swanning around with the rich and famous comes naturally. Decepticon high command was one thing and Hollywood something else again. New Cybertron is a whole other level. He takes a mouthful of engex to buy time. If there’s one advantage he has, it’s that his oversized fuel tanks—built to burn high-test energon at maximum efficiency—can take an absurd amount of drinking before it knocks him over.

Decanter is a different sort of unsettling from the doubles. The thing is, Thundercracker _doesn’t know him at all._ He’s used to recognizing every living Cybertronian by name, if not by face, and Decanter is a total blank. Where the war whittled Old Cybertron down to a bare handful of faces, New Cybertron teems with life. He has no idea what to expect of the mech, no frame of context. Even his altmode is obscure: some kind of lab equipment, yellow optics, a refined indigo paint job with silver accents, his frame so delicate and civilian that Thundercracker wonders how he doesn’t snap in the breeze. It's the height of fashion, surely, but to Thundercracker’s war-hardened sense of aesthetics it seems somewhere between bizarre and scandalous.

Decanter’s hand lingers still on the small of Thundercracker’s back. Thundercracker doesn’t miss the way Decanter’s optics rove over his wings. He lets them flutter a little more than they otherwise might and Decanter tracks their every move.

Never let it be said he learned nothing from Starscream.

(He tries not to think of Starscream. It sends a pang through his spark each time he remembers; somewhere along the way, he’d begun thinking of Starscream as immortal. Throughout their long war he’d always bounced back from whatever the universe could throw at him, until that last time, when there had been nothing left of him to bounce.)

Decanter, Thundercracker decides, hasn’t brought him here to play at being an aristocrat. He’s meant to be exotic. A novelty. The big, war-armored flightframe should be low class but not _too_ low class. Well-behaved, but with the hint he might not be. Danger without being dangerous. There was a time—a very, very, _very_ long time ago—when Megatron had been engaged to read his poetry to crowds of well-heeled society mechs. They’d liked the contrast between the pretty words and his big rough miner’s frame. He wonders if Megatron had felt as absurd as he does now.

In the interest of not botching things completely, Thundercracker borrows a few more of Starscream’s tricks: he adjusts his posture so the overhead lights flare off the long barrels of his guns, lets his wings spread wider, and leans forward to emphasize his height. He’s a third again Decanter’s size, and knows he’s chosen right when Decanter’s optics go a little glassy. He considers letting his turbines spin into a subsonic thrum, but no, that’s probably overdoing it. Plus he might break something.

Primus, the things he does for show business.

“I saw a lot during the war, but never anything quite like this.” Thundercracker points at the curios and art objects displayed along the wall, carefully crude. An organic plant hangs suspended in a force bubble, nearly as tall as Thundercracker himself. “Is that an orange tree?”

Decanter looks surprised, then pleased. “Are you familiar with organic flora? Yes, I just had it imported. Fascinating things, organics, though somewhat repellent.”

Thundercracker nods. “Ah. The rotting. Yeah, that’s something to get used to.”

“No, though the analog solar panels do have an unfortunate tendency to fall off and decay. It’s the speed and unpredictability of them—savage, primitive organisms… Though I suppose they wouldn’t be at all interesting if they weren’t. I’m thinking of converting a section of the crystal gardens into an arboretum.”

“They live about sixty vorns, I think.”

“So short a time?” Decanter frowns. “Perhaps it isn’t worth it.”

“They do sort of, uh, clone themselves,” Thundercracker says, unsure himself of the intricacies of carbon-based life. “They grow eggs and hatch new trees. You won’t run out.”

“All the same, I wouldn’t want to be overrun—you know, Thundercracker, if there’s one thing winding up in a parallel universe has provided, it’s novelty.”

Thundercracker can’t keep the question out of his voice. “Not exactly what I expected to hear from an information minister.”

“_Ex_-minister. Now, no more than a simple citizen.” Decanter leans in conspiratorially, his helm nearly brushing Thundercracker’s cockpit. “Between you and me, I was never fond of the functionists. As if we should all live in some enormous chronometer, counting out the joyless orns! Mechs being suited to their purpose is one thing, but that absurd crusade against organic life? That was just doctrine. What should it matter to Primus how other planets live?”

_Absurd_ isn’t the word Thundercracker would use for reformatting your planet to punch other planets to death, but—okay, well, no. It is sort of absurd.

“That’s good to hear,” Thundercracker says.

“Did you worry that New Cybertron would be a planet of maddened zealots?” Decanter laughs. “I do understand the trepidation. The council spoke a lot about Primus’ will, but I doubt they ever knew it. Megatron did us a favor overthrowing those fanatics. After all the chaos of the past few decivorns, I’m just glad we can get back to some semblance of good governance.”

This is Thundercracker’s opening. His _chance_. The pitch he’d prepared back on Earth spools into working memory. “Speaking of novelty, Decanter—”

“Oh yes! I nearly forgot.”

Thundercracker trips over his own speech. “Uh?”

Decanter has already turned away. He raises his engex flute and taps a silver fingertip upon it; a high ringing tone fills the room. The music quiets. Conversations lull. Decanter turns to the expectant crowd, arms spread wide, and Thundercracker has the sudden, ridiculous certainty _he’s_ about to be shoved into the spotlight, a sacrifice to the ravenous hordes.

“Friends, esteemed guests, and those few I can’t stand but who snuck in anyway…” Decanter pauses for scattered laughter, as if it’s an old joke. He smiles broadly. “I hope you’re all having as wonderful a night as I am! I’ve prepared a most diverting evening’s entertainment in the next room, if you’ll just proceed through the atrium doors—don’t worry, there will be plenty of high grade on tap. No need to drink it all now!”

Behind Decanter, Thundercracker watches his opportunity evaporate, tunes Decanter out, drains his engex flute to the dregs, and fetches another. So much for accomplishing anything useful. He was right the first time: this party’s a bust, it’s full of boring rich people he doesn’t care to know, and he half wishes Skywarp were on-planet so they could give it the crashing it thoroughly deserves. He pays only dim attention as Decanter finishes saying whatever it is he’s saying. The crowd begins filtering through a high arch at the back of the room. Thundercracker makes to snag a tray of delicate bismuth-crusted wafers and leave before anyone notices he’s ditched.

Decanter’s hand closes on Thundercracker’s elbow.

Thundercracker freezes. He looks cautiously down at Decanter, like he wasn’t about to dump the wafers into his cockpit and run. “Yes?”

“I said, won’t you accompany me to my observation box? You _are_ a guest of honor.”

“I, uh.” Thundercracker’s optics rove for an escape route. He finds nothing. “…Sure. Of course. I’d… love to.”

“Splendid!”

Thundercracker has no choice but to leave the tray behind and follow Decanter. He snags a handful of wafers, though, and subspaces them before anyone realizes. They pass through the archway. On the other side, rows of seating step down toward a central floor quite some ways below. The walls hang thick in rich mesh drapery, all red and gold. Where they’re bare they’re engraved with massive images of the primes: Solus at her forge, Alchemist holding aloft a bubbling vial, Mortilus weighing the spark chambers of the dead. The seats are wide and plush. The guests settle themselves into them, laughing and chatting, as Decanter leads Thundercracker down to a large private box.

Thundercracker braces himself for an evening of banal functionist theatre. There are no two ways about it: functionists make some of the worst art he’s ever experienced, and that includes the collection of Tarn’s love poems someone leaked halfway through the war and which no one was allowed to make fun of on account of Tarn would murder them. Not that it stopped Starscream from quoting the choice bits about the girth of Megatron’s fusion cannon. Thundercracker had been incredibly grateful when a blow to the helm had erased most of it from his long-term memory.

Then he realizes the stage is floored in sand.

Thundercracker stops in his tracks, engex flute gripped tight between his fingers. This isn’t a stage. It’s an _arena_. The towers have their own fighting pit, because of course they do. Bloodsports are light party fare, because _of course they are. _He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. It all comes rushing back: all the reasons they’d toppled the towers and started the war. Watching people die for fun is the least of it. As he looks down onto that small, sand-covered killing floor, he has the vertiginous feeling the last four million years haven’t happened at all; as if Megatron himself might walk through one of those gates, scarred and speaking revolution.

The engex flute makes a slight cracking sound. Glowing pink seeps in a rivulet to drip from his knuckles, livid as a wound.

“Oh no, you’ve hurt yourself!” Decanter takes Thundercracker’s hand without asking. “I suppose these flutes aren’t suited to a mech with such a… _Reinforced_ build. Do you need a medic?”

“I’m fine,” Thundercracker says, tightly. He snatches his hand back. “I’m not much of a fan of pit fights.”

“I would have thought a mech of your history would enjoy that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, well, people dying isn’t my idea of fun.”

“Thundercracker, really now!” Decanter throws his head back in laughter, his knuckles pressed to his mouth. “Do you take us for golden-age Kaonian savages? No one will be _murdered_. Honestly, the idea!”

Thundercracker’s brow furrows. “It’s a surrender bout?”

“Not even that! Only friendly entertainment, I promise. A few drones and mechanimals, some non-sentient organics, that sort of thing. A pack of trained turbofoxes taking down a tunneler might be showy, but no one gets hurt. Come on, now. Watch with me.”

All the eloquence that got Thundercracker here deserts him. He grunts noncommittally. Decanter takes it for agreement and tugs him the rest of the way into the private box.

Drones and mechanimals or not, he’s never liked meaningless violence. Thundercracker comes down the steps after Decanter unwillingly, as if drawn on a string. The box is a seat of honor; he can’t turn and leave without being the focus of all those judging optics. He misses the war, suddenly, when all these niceties didn’t matter. When he could’ve walked out without a second thought. When all the mechs like _Decanter_ didn’t matter. He drains the last of his cracked engex flute before it can leak all over him. His chest aches and he rubs his cockpit with the heel of his hand. He’s had more than enough. Decanter’s private reserve is strong stuff.

The crowd settles into place. The lights focus on the arena below. An announcer starts working the crowd up about the exciting things they’re about to see, but honestly, Thundercracker’s barely paying attention. Once the crowd’s nice and riled, a buzzer sounds and the arena gates come up. Thundercracker tenses, but true to Decanter’s word, what emerges are a small pack of turbofoxes and a lumbering mining drone.

The drone’s drill whirs to life. The turbofoxes scatter. Thundercracker finds himself leaning closer, despite himself. A solid blow from that drill would be a death sentence for a thinly-plated turbofox, but the drone’s slow and clumsy—and the turbofoxes are _fast_. He’d almost forgotten just how fast they could be, what with them having been extinct on Old Cybertron for a few thousand vorns. The pack works in concert, circling and nipping as the drone strikes empty air.

What should be a one-sided fight draws out as bets are called. Shanix changes hands. The crowd roars encouragement: at the turbofoxes, at the drone, at both. The drone finally gets a hit in and the drill punctures a turbofox’s side. Thundercracker winces. The turbofox goes down squealing and shrieking in a spray of energon; the rest take the opportunity to swarm the drone all at once, a whirlwind of diamond carbide teeth. Plating crumples. Muddy purple machine-grade energon spatters the sand. Two rip off the drone’s head between them and the drone chokes and collapses. The remaining turbofoxes peel its heavy chassis open to feast happily on its exposed fuel tank. Eventually a keeper emerges to lure them back into holding with bits of raw energon crystal. The crowd cheers.

It leaves Thundercracker cold. Sure, the Decepticons had a reputation for violence, but he’s never understood the point of seeking it out. Sometimes you need to kill someone—that’s just war—but doing it for fun? Watching someone _else_ do it for fun? The corpses of the turbofox and drone (do they count as corpses? A drone’s just a machine, and turbofoxes are basically non-sentient and nothing like dogs at all, but still, it makes him think of Buster to see it crumpled there) lie forgotten in the sand until the rest of the pack’s squared away. A team of attendants follows to clean up in preparation for the next bout. Thundercracker supposes the dead frames will be unceremoniously dumped in a smelter and rendered down for parts.

It just seems so pointless.

He wishes he had another helping of high grade. At the same time he’s glad he doesn’t. Whatever Decanter puts in his drinks, it’s strong. He’s definitely feeling it. There’s a jittery, unpleasant edge to the expected high energy and euphoria; an anxious, unfocused itch like he should be doing something and isn’t. Exotic and illegal intoxicants had always been rumored to flow like solvent in the towers. He hopes he hasn’t been dosed with something nasty. It probably won’t kill him, sure, but even his war-hardened systems could be in for a bad time. He runs a few toxin scans just to be certain. They come up clean, which is clearly total scrap.

Decanter pats him on the arm. Thundercracker twitches all over with hastily aborted violence. Decanter laughs like Thundercracker’s just _jumpy_. He has no idea how close he came to getting the same treatment as the mining drone.

“I hope I’m not boring you.”

“I’m not bored,” Thundercracker answers. It's technically true. Two more bouts have slid by while he was lost in his own head. Down in the pit a trio of attendants struggle to remove the massive carcass of a Denebian knifeworm as a gore-spattered industrial drone takes slow, even steps back to the holding pens, heedless of its torn-off arm. “Like I said, this isn’t my thing.”

Decanter nods, slowly. “I suppose it must seem small to you.”

“Small?”

“Compared to your war! The scale of it is difficult to wrap one’s processor around, Thundercracker. I’ve read what histories are available, but the scope is so broad as to seem fictional. Fifty thousand vorns! A hundred thousand worlds! There’s so much that it blends together.”

“Yeah,” Thundercracker mutters. “It felt a lot like that living it.”

“I imagine it must have.” Decanter frowns at the dead worm slowly being rolled across the sand. “I suppose this Cybertron feels much the same to you. A whole alternate history, a world that never was… Except that it is, and it’s here, like a warped mirror. I admit I’m curious: you’re a warframe, and yet the stories you tell make very little mention of war.”

Thundercracker cycles his optics in surprise. Decanter’s actually seen his movies? “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because being good at something doesn’t mean liking it. It doesn’t even mean it’s useful. That’s what the functionists got wrong.” Thundercracker waves at the worm disappearing through an open gate. “On a small scale it’s exciting, I guess—seeing something die. But the more deaths there are, the less it means. You do it enough and killing’s just work. I’ve taken enough out of the universe. I want to put something back in.”

Decanter tips his head back to look at Thundercracker—really _look_ at him, for the first time. Not his wings, not his guns, not his shiny amber cockpit, _him_. 

The dying embers of Thundercracker’s hope for not going home empty-handed flare bright. He cobbles together a hasty, pared-down version of his pitch and launches into it. “You know, I’ve been looking for just the right person to help bring Earth’s wider culture and my own films to a new audience. _Starscream: the Movie_ was a hit on the awards circuit, but my current production is shaping up to be a blockbuster. It’s still in the early drafting stages, but there’s some real interplanetary appeal—”

Decanter doesn’t tell him to shut up, so Thundercracker keeps talking. The plot’s based on his own experience with getting stuck on Earth. It stars a thinly veiled Marissa and Buster, except that Buster can talk. When Decanter still doesn’t seem bored, Thundercracker gets into the themes and the tone and the soundtrack he’s hoping to have composed by Rosanna or maybe Ramin Djawadi, except by that point he kind of wishes Decanter _would_ lose interest, because he feels worse by the klik. Something behind his cockpit _burns_.

He has terrible visions of acid in his fuel tank or an unintended chain reaction corroding his lines. What the frag was in that engex? His system checks still show all clear, which can’t be true. The only thing that keeps him from scratching at his chest is the knowledge that it won’t help. The pain’s deep down inside, out of reach of wayward hands: a low, throbbing ache that pulses in time with his spark. His temperature rises as his internal defenses hunt for a problem they can’t find. He grips the front of the box to keep from swaying and rejects the prompt to turn on his fans.

He wishes he’d left joors ago. He wishes he’d never come to this party.

Below, the attendants have finally disposed of the worm and raked the sand flat. It’s stained in fluids of all types and colors, mech and organic alike. Is it his imagination or can he smell it from here, thick and sour as a battlefield?

Decanter doesn’t seem to notice his distress, just looks at the arena as if to see what’s caught Thundercracker’s attention. His voice takes on the pitch of a mech sharing a smug secret. “Even if the others bored you, you’ll like this next one. It’s one of a kind.”

Thundercracker makes a vague agreeing noise and relies on vorns of practice at keeping a neutral expression. He can bear this a little longer. He has to. Then he’ll fly back to the hotel and collapse.

The match buzzer sounds again. The arena gates open to reveal a selection of drones: on the right, a cluster of the drones the New Cybertronian enforcers’ office uses, the ones with the creepy black glass faces and lanky bodies that remind him weirdly of protoforms. On the left, a single drone of unfamiliar make and unclear purpose, smaller and lighter than the security or industrial drones that came before it, but no less battered. It’s dull grey with remnants of dusty red still clinging, two odd projections jutting from its shoulders, its chest a swelling counterweight to make up for its lack of much of a head. Its forearms are two sets of knifelike claws, its face a single crimson optic.

It’s a sort of empuratee caricature. The whole thing is frankly in bad taste. He opens his mouth to tell Decanter so when the security drones rush forward. The smaller drone doesn’t move. Thundercracker leans in, sure it’s about to be ripped apart.

At the last second it ducks, twists, and lets two drones run into one another. It dodges a sizzling blaster shot and drives its claws through the nearest security drone’s torso. There’s a horrible shriek of ripped metal and shattering glass. The security drone bleats static. Those claws rip back out. The security drone drops shuddering into the sand, leaking energon and oil. The little drone has already moved on. Some of Thundercracker’s discomfort falls away as he focuses on it—as it darts and dodges, feints and strikes. The other drones beep and ping at one another but the small one never makes a sound. Thundercracker catches himself mimicking its motions, body leaning, hands twitching. It’s the first bit of grace he’s seen all evening. He wants the drone to _win_.

“I knew you’d like it,” Decanter says.

Thundercracker jolts from his trance. The chest pain comes back worse than ever. He grimaces. “I don’t recognize the make.”

“I told you, it’s one of a kind. The crown jewel of my collection. An antique! The council would have smelted it, can you imagine? What an absolute waste.”

Thundercracker’s grip on the box’s edge tightens. The little drone might be fast, but it isn’t invulnerable. _Antique_ is right. It can’t match the security drones’ indefatigable endurance. As the bout draws out it switches to more cautious tactics, allowing them just close enough to strike before retreating. Another security drone goes down, sparks spitting from its crunched-in face. The little drone stalks a third with unerring focus, energon smeared up to its elbows. It charges. The security drone opens fire. The little drone dodges, but not quickly enough. A stray energy pulse sears a bubbled scar along its shoulder.

Thundercracker gasps and grabs his own arm. He felt that. He _felt_ it. It must be drugs in his engex. A sympathetic reaction. Psychosomatic, because the alternative—the alternative is—

But he _knows_, suddenly, with the most awful kind of certainty.

Slowly, Thundercracker says, “That isn’t a drone.”

“Of course it’s a drone, Thundercracker.” Decanter looks at him very oddly indeed, as if he’s just suggested the sky is green, the will of Primus is mutable, or that the Cybertronian race isn’t destined to lay waste to whatever it touches. “Cold constructs aren’t people.”

Thundercracker hardly hears him for the ringing in his head, for the pitch-black rage threatening to claw its way up his throat and choke him. He names his aching chest for what it is: a severed trine bond scrabbling for its missing ends. The drone in the pit is the scarred form of a seeker, its hands reduced to pincers, face removed, wings stripped to the mounting stubs, near-feral as it cuts its way through the security drones with single-minded determination.

“Starscream?” Thundercracker whispers.


	2. Chapter 2

Starscream looks right at him.

  


In that moment of distraction a security drone shoots Starscream in the chest. Another sweeps his legs out from under him. He goes down hard in the filthy arena sand. Thundercracker _feels_ each impact as if they happened to him, but from a distance: the burn of low-energy particle discharge, the strut-rattling crash of plating, the jolt of pain through his back and side. He flinches when the drone kicks Starscream in the welded-over place where his cockpit should be. Starscream curls around it, agonized. He doesn’t make a sound. Thundercracker can’t tell if he can’t or if he just won’t give the audience the satisfaction. It would be like him.

Thundercracker’s in motion before he thinks the better of it. He vaults the railing. His thrusters hit the arena floor with a heavy impact. His combat systems burn online, second nature, as instinctive as rising from recharge. Decanter cries out behind him—worried, perhaps, about the health and sanity of his _honored guest_—but Thundercracker doesn’t pay him any mind, just grabs the nearest drone, breaks its backstrut, and blasts a hole in the one behind it. The gunshot resonates on the arena’s high ceiling. The drone drops limp to the arena floor. He tosses aside the one he’s holding and goes for Starscream.

Starscream struggles into a crouch, sides heaving as he draws air through his overheated frame. His front is scorched. Energon drips into the sand. He levers himself up on a claw point, ready to fight or to run. His optic doesn’t leave Thundercracker, lens blown wide and crimson. Thundercracker reaches him in three quick strides.

“Starscream!” Thundercracker scoops Starscream into his arms and lifts him to his feet. It’s much easier than it should be. Starscream was never the biggest of seekers, but now he seems downright delicate. “I’ve got you. Come on, grab onto me. Let’s—”

Starscream stabs him in the side.

Thundercracker yelps and drops him. Starscream skitters backward, fresh energon on his sharpened claws, the tips unsteady. It isn’t that Starscream doesn’t recognize him. It’s the opposite. He stares at Thundercracker as if nothing else exists, optic cycling, sliding from Thundercracker’s face to his wings to the bright trickle of energon where Starscream got him between plates and back again. His fans accelerate to a high, stressed whine like the components are on the edge of burning out.

Thundercracker adjusts his wings and posture into something less threatening, hands open and empty. He approaches Starscream as if the other seeker is a spooked mechanimal. For every step he takes, Starscream retreats. Thundercracker pauses and makes a conscious effort to widen that ragged trine bond instead. It feels… _Wrong_, still, like homing in on a frequency just out of range; like the edges of a cracked strut grating. He isn’t sure how much gets through, but he sends Starscream all the calm and reassurance he can muster.

“It’s me, Starscream,” he says, in the voice he uses when Buster spots a shadow in the night and the fur on her tiny little neck stands on end. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

Starscream sways in place as if hypnotized. The trine bond bleeds erratic nonsense at him, fragments of images, _pain-confusion-disbelief_. Thundercracker creeps closer. This time, Starscream doesn’t go anywhere. Thundercracker halts near enough to brush that scuffed plating with a fingertip. Starscream just looks at him all slack and dazed, the ghost of his spark through the bond an impenetrable whirlwind. His gaze catches on the energon trickling from Thundercracker’s side.

“_Thundercracker!_” Decanter shouts. “What in the universe do you think you’re doing? The arena is hardly safe, and this behavior is completely inappropriate. You can’t honestly want to fight that thing yourself!”

Starscream snaps out of it. He launches himself at Thundercracker in a vicious frenzy, sudden and panicked. Claws aim at soft joints and the exposed slits of protoform within. It’s calculated brutality. It might have worked if Thundercracker hadn’t been battle-armored; if he hadn’t fought and trained alongside Starscream for a great majority of the war’s fifty thousand vorns. If he didn’t know all Starscream’s tricks. As it is, Thundercracker blocks, parries, lets Starscream stumble in exhaustion, then grabs him around the middle, pins his arms to his sides, and hoists him off the ground to take away his leverage.

Their chests grind together, the side of Starscream’s helm trapped against Thundercracker’s collar faring. Thundercracker grips the seam between the mounting stubs where Starscream’s wings—aren’t. The trine bond floods with the echo of Starscream’s wildly flaring spark, with a terror so far beyond fear it hardly seems like the same emotion. Starscream wriggles but can’t break his grasp. Thundercracker pushes deliberate calm at him as best he’s able. Starscream’s struggling slows but the terror tries to infect him in return, deep and cold as the interstellar void.

“Calm down,” Thundercracker says, under his breath so only Starscream can hear (for all the good it’s ever done telling Starscream to _calm down_). “Stop fighting me. I’m trying to get you out of here!”

The crowd grows restless. It rumbles its displeasure. They’d expected excitement when he’d thrown himself into the ring, not swift and workmanlike violence followed by… _This_. A few progress to booing. Thundercracker doesn’t particularly care that he’s interrupted their fun. Up in that private box Decanter’s having an impassioned word with a bunch of bruisers who might or might not be enforcers—probably his security. Drones aren’t good for everything. He looks furious.

Thundercracker considers that making a spectacle of himself in the middle of the towers may not have been the smartest thing he’s ever done. He didn’t come into this with an exit strategy, and he considers his options now. None are exactly great. There’s no way out of this without breaking something, and if it’s all the same to Decanter, he’d rather that something wasn’t the arena’s occupants. He’s about to tell Decanter so when the arena gates crash open behind him.

Six security drones troop out to take back what belongs to Decanter, each of them sleek and glass-faced and bristling with weaponry—the upgraded version of the security drones Decanter had set on Starscream. They look built to stop a riot. Thundercracker turns to face them with Starscream still clasped in his arms, half expecting another hideous revelation—but the drones are just machines, formidable but sparkless. Thundercracker ignores them.

He glares up at Decanter. “Call them off. We’re leaving.”

“You most certainly are not! Put that drone down. It isn’t yours. I don’t know what I was thinking, inviting a warframe to a formal event! You’re as brutish as your caste is reputed to be.”

“He’s a _person_,” Thundercracker snarls.

There’s a dark part of him that’s faded since the end of the war. He’s done his best to _make_ it fade. It rises now like a bubble through tar, complex combat subsystems begging to come online, tactical subroutines offering up the most efficient ways to kill everyone in the room. His guns ache to fire. He could do it. It would be easy. Usually wholesale slaughter was Starscream or Skywarp’s department, but he’s more than capable of picking up the slack.

But the war is over. He can’t go around solving his problems with murder. Not even when he really, _really_ wants to. He promised Marissa.

Decanter looks down his nose at Thundercracker, all that false hospitality stripped away. His hand rises. He gestures for the drones to take Thundercracker down. Thundercracker hoists Starscream higher and blows the heads off all six before they take the first step. They topple into the sand all shrapnel and oozing fluids, scattered like the cheap toys they are. Thundercracker raises his helm. He meets Decanter’s yellow optics, steady and even. It’s with immense satisfaction he sees fear flicker in their depths. Is this how Megatron felt all those vorns ago, looking up at well-mannered monsters, wanting to raze the world to the ground?

“How dare you?” Decanter sputters. “Do you have any idea of the _cost_—”

“I know a few things about prices, yeah.”

Thundercracker doesn’t raise his voice, but Decanter shuts up as if he had. He feels even more like Megatron in that moment, words burning in his spark, in the frayed end of a trine bond, faced with the stark reminder of just what they’d torn down fifty thousand vorns ago on another world. His words ring on the high ceiling and fill the hush of his audience’s growing dread.

“We had a war on my Cybertron about who counted as people,” Thundercracker says. “You might have heard of it. And maybe it went on too long. Maybe it destroyed more than it saved, but I’ll tell you this much: when we burned these towers to the ground, your slaves and servants helped us bar you inside them.”

No one tries to stop him leaving.

Thundercracker gets while the getting’s good. He doesn’t expect the crowd’s shock to last, and Decanter’s fear will soon turn to rage at his public humiliation. That’s how rich mechs are. At some point during the proceedings Starscream had stopped struggling. Thundercracker carries his limp weight up to the rooftop crystal garden. When he emerges into Primax’s neon-lit night he checks to be sure Starscream hasn’t dropped dead on him. What few splotches of paint Starscream has are ungreyed, his optic unfocused, his limbs loose, the trine bond quiet and empty. But he’s alive. He seems so much lighter than he should be, so terribly light, and so still; he’s so small without his wings.

Thundercracker has never seen any version of Starscream so passive. He tries not to pay too much attention to his own unease. He spares a moment to regret, again, that Skywarp is on Earth. With Starscream’s wings absent and without the convenience of instantaneous teleportation, Thundercracker will have to carry him. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before, though it’s been a while since he was on a battlefield. It’s a simple enough thing to transform, grab Starscream in his docking clamps, and throw himself from the tower. Primax’s warm, exhaust-tinged air rushes over his wings, thinner than Earth’s humid atmosphere but no less satisfying. At top speed it takes less than ten kliks to reach his hotel. The whole way there he’s on alert, ready to compensate if Starscream wakes up and gets fighty, but he never does.

The _Grand Garer _emerges from Primax’s hazy glow like the _Nemesis’_ conn tower rising from the sea, and for a moment Thundercracker almost misses that old hulk of a battleship. Light spills from the penthouse windows where he left them open. The _Grand Garer_ is one of the few buildings left over from Primax’s stint as another city, and one of the few built with flightframes in mind. Until him, the landing-pad balcony had been little but an architectural curiosity. He skims over its retrofitted guardrail, transforms back to rootmode, lands, and catches Starscream in a practiced motion. Starscream makes no effort to free himself.

“You’re really freaking me out,” Thundercracker tells him.

Starscream stares at a point beyond Thundercracker’s shoulder. Thundercracker nudges him until his lolling head points more or less at Thundercracker’s face, but even then it’s not so much being looked _at_ as looked _through_. He tamps down on another surge of unease. Strain seeps into his voice.

“You should be vowing revenge on every one of those slag-sucking towerlings by now. Or complaining about me carrying you wrong, or demanding a bath, or—_Primus_, Starscream, give me _something_.”

Starscream’s optic tips fractionally toward Thundercracker at the sound of his name. He doesn’t otherwise react. Doesn’t say a word. He hasn’t spoken this whole time, in fact, and that more than anything sets Thundercracker on edge. Starscream loves to hear himself talk, but now—now energon trickles from cuts and burns all over his frame and he barely seems to notice. He’s dazed, damaged, looking but not _seeing_. If not for the jagged connection of the trine bond Thundercracker could take him for the drone Decanter had named him.

It’s only just sinking in what it means that this is _Starscream_. How long has Decanter had him? How long had the functionists had him before that? The empurata and the scraped-up paint job, that’s obvious damage, but what lurks under the surface, waiting to be found?

Thundercracker knows better than to startle Starscream when wounded, no matter how passive he seems. He sets Starscream against the wall and telegraphs every move, all slow deliberateness, hands always in full view. They rise to Starscream’s face—_lack_ of a face, _Primus_—ready to stop if he flinches, but he doesn’t. The trine bond barely flickers when he makes contact. Starscream keeps that same dull, unfocused aspect as Thundercracker takes his ruined helm in his palms and tilts it up to see the damage.

The shape of him is still there, but where it should frame his cheeks, chin, and thin, sarcastic mouth, there are only the sharp hollow jaw-points of his helm and absence where his face should be. His hazy red optic is so old and scratched it’s a wonder he sees anything at all, the well of shadows surrounding it impossibly dark. Thundercracker’s fingers sink into the space beneath. When he draws back he finds them coated in a thick, greasy layer of dirt, dried energon, internal fluids, and Primus knows what else. Starscream’s filthy. The flecks of paint clinging to his chassis are the sad, straggling remnants of nearly depleted nanite colonies, and where he’s not scuffed, his plating has the brittle gleam of mineral starvation. It's a miracle he hasn’t died of a rust infection vorns ago.

“Let’s get you cleaned up.” Thundercracker injects false cheer into his voice. “You’d like that, right? You always hated being dirty. Come on, this place has a huge washrack and like six types of solvent. I’ll even polish you up. Did you know they never stopped making Petrohex Black Diamond wax here? It’s great stuff, really cuts down on the air resistance—”

He keeps up a stream of meaningless chatter as he braces himself to carry Starscream inside, but to his surprise Starscream wobbles up on his own. It isn’t graceful, and he still doesn’t look like he really knows where he is or what’s happening, but he follows Thundercracker in like something domesticated. He tracks dirty sand and drops of fuel all over the penthouse. Thundercracker can’t bring himself to care. In the penthouse’s cavernous washrack (calling it a washrack seems wrong. It’s too nice for that, and nothing like the cramped, dingy stalls they used throughout the war where the solvent ran cold after five kliks) Starscream stands out like a sore thumb. Everything’s sleek and gleaming from the tiled solvent shower to the big, empty oil tub sunken into the floor, and meanwhile, Starscream’s halfway to being a Dead End empty.

Thundercracker herds him under a showerhead. He turns on the solvent barely this side of scalding, just how Starscream has always liked it. That’s one thing New Cybertron has over Earth: water’s great and all, but the boiling point’s so _low, _and you have to keep it out of your interior or rust. It’s no way to cut grease. Hot solvent cascades over Starscream’s frame, puddles at his feet, and runs down the drain black and pink.

What _happened_ to him?

Thundercracker isn’t sure he wants to know. The war hadn’t been enough to break him. _Megatron_ hadn’t been enough to break him, and he’d _tried_. Starscream’s been bouncing back from things that would crush lesser mechs for as long as Thundercracker has known him, and this is something different. Thundercracker can’t even call him resigned to his situation. Ever since he’d gone limp on the way out, it’s like there’s nothing there. The trine bond doesn’t seem closed off so much as silent, as if Starscream has simply… Turned himself off, somehow.

What really nags at him is that, by any logic, Starscream shouldn’t exist.

Thundercracker is no expert on New Cybertron’s divergent history, but he knows this much—it was the same as Old Cybertron’s until somewhere before the revolution, before the functionist council solidified their grasp on the planet like a tightening garotte. Whatever the truth behind their euphemisms, the fact of the matter is that it bears no warframes, seekers, spaceworthy alts, or cold constructed mechs.

Except Starscream, a cold-constructed seeker warframe built capable of breaking orbit and jaunts in the open vacuum, so long as there’s enough fuel on hand. The more he thinks about it the less sense it makes.

It’s an ugly thing to realize that just about everyone he’s ever known falls into those categories; it sits under his spark, a strange, squirming thing. Starscream’s survival doesn’t mean anything for the rest of them. He was always good at living through the impossible. The rest are probably all dead and have been for a very long time.

Thundercracker chooses the heaviest-duty scrubbing pad from the hotel’s supply. He approaches Starscream and waits for him to do something—to consent or refuse or hit him or _anything_—and gets nothing, only that blank stare, optic steaming up as solvent patters onto his helm. Starscream doesn’t so much as twitch as Thundercracker sets the pad to plating and scrubs caked-on filth from its surface. Underneath the mess Starscream has a lot more white paint left on him than he’d thought; he tries to be gentle with the worst damage but Starscream doesn’t react, not even when he wipes down the mounting stubs that are all that’s left of his wings. They shouldn’t be exposed to the air, never mind the harsh wash of solvent. They shouldn’t even be _touched_. It’s like he can’t feel them at all. Maybe they’ve gone numb with time.

He works his way down Starscream’s body, cataloguing dents and scrapes. He runs across a dozen cuts and splits and torn lines, places plating’s come loose and been badly repaired; he finds the scars of lumpy, halfhearted weld-marks. None of it is immediately life-threatening. His spark clenches anyway. When he straightens up he pauses on Starscream’s collar faring, fingers on the cables of his throat, the faint pulse of circulating fuel beneath his hands.

Someone’s disconnected Starscream’s vocalizer.

No wonder he hasn’t made a sound. The vocalizer dangles loose from its housing, the surrounding space all lined in shallow scratches like he’d tried to reconnect it himself and couldn’t. A new wave of fury swamps Thundercracker. He wishes he’d shot Decanter along with the drones, consequences or not. He wishes he’d thrown Decanter off the tower to break on the road below. He wishes—

Starscream flinches.

Thundercracker winces and reels in his own emotions, dampening the trine bond as best he can. “Sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m just… Mad. In general. I’m reconnecting this, okay? I’ll do my best, but it’ll probably hurt. I’m not a medic.”

It takes about two kliks to snap the vocalizer’s connections back into place, which just goes to show how little care anyone has taken. A burst of involuntary static leaks from Starscream’s throat on reconnection, but nothing more. That big round optic watches him. Thundercracker sees his own grim reflection in its surface. Something cold curls in his spark.

He wonders if Starscream is… _Damaged_, in some way. If, after all this time, he’s still meaningfully himself.

He finishes cleaning Starscream up, forcing himself to watch as Starscream’s bare plating emerges completely from beneath caked-on foulness, worse than he expected: all scars and pitted seams, remnants of a paint job clinging to thin civilian plating, glimpses of unhealthy-looking protoform filling in the gaps. His turbines are a ruin. They probably haven’t worked in vorns and wouldn't even if Starscream were getting adequate rations, which he obviously isn’t. He’s dull with starvation, nanites flaky and dying, and Thundercracker nearly drowns in another flare of blinding fury that someone has hurt him, has kept him, that this has been _done_. He and Starscream may not always have gotten along, but he knows what Starscream is, and it isn’t this silent, staring thing. The trinemate he’d always known was indomitable, unbreakable, _unstoppable_, except for that one last time—

“You’re dead,” Starscream says.

It’s staticky and rough-edged, nuance stripped by a cheap empuratee’s vocal processor. He’s barely intelligible through the artifacting. Thundercracker does a double take. Starscream’s focused on him, really _looking_ for perhaps the first time, optic blown wide and gleaming.

Carefully, Thundercracker asks, “Starscream?”

“I saw you die,” Starscream repeats. A slight tremor runs through him. His voice cracks into feedback halfway through. One claw rises, hesitant, to bump Thundercracker’s plating. He jolts back as if burned. “Is this real?”

“We got out just fine, Starscream. Nobody died.”

“But you’re _dead_. You are. I _saw_.” He steps forward once, and again, until he’s close enough to touch. The trine bond is a maelstrom: all chaotic, unnameable things, and Thundercracker raises his hand to cradle Starscream’s helm. Starscream leans into it. He shudders. Steam lends the air a hazy, unreal quality. “This is fake. I’m dreaming.”

“It’s real,” Thundercracker says, quietly. “I’m here.”

Starscream sags against his front without warning. Thundercracker barely catches him. They sink to the bottom of the washrack and he ends up with Starscream halfway into his lap, hot solvent sluicing over them both. He has only a moment to be grateful they’re not sprawled on some dingy warship’s washrack floor before Starscream moves. Thundercracker lets him go automatically, but Starscream’s trying to get closer, not away. In a moment Starscream’s clinging to him and there’s no hope of getting up at all.

An empuratee’s weeping is an ugly thing: silent except for broken static, sparks bleeding from an overstressed optic to singe whatever they touch. It had been on the tip of Thundercracker’s tongue to tell Starscream the truth—that he might well be _Thundercracker_, but he’s still not precisely who Starscream thinks. It dies unvoiced. In this moment, does it matter?

_Is this real_, he’d asked.

He wishes again that Skywarp were here. He’s better at cutting to the heart of a situation. Thundercracker always overthinks. The only place he can untangle other people’s emotions is on the page. When Starscream’s weeping gives way to silence Thundercracker just sits there, his not-dead not-trinemate curled against his front, because he doesn’t know what else to do. Solvent rains down to drip from Starscream’s claws and wing stubs and the hollow jaw-prongs of his helm. It never does go cold.


	3. Chapter 3

When the blowers evaporate them dry, Thundercracker patches Starscream’s sluggishly leaking wounds, scoops his unresisting frame into his arms, and carries him out of the washrack. He sets Starscream on the low couch by the window. Again he notices how Starscream is so much lighter than he should be; so much smaller. He gets angry all over again but knows it won’t do him any good. He balls those feelings up and stomps on them. 

When he returns from filling a cube of midgrade, Starscream hasn’t stirred. All that tells Thundercracker he’s still aware is the focus in his optic where he stares at the city spread out below. The penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows offer a wraparound view; they’re high above Primax, so high the thin vapor that passes for New Cybertron’s clouds wraps around its base like the ghosts of contrails. The roads below are little more than a glittering map. Starscream’s wing nubs twitch. Thundercracker edges in front of him and slides the balcony doors shut before he gets any stupid ideas.

“Hey Starscream, I brought you a cube,” Thundercracker says. “Plain midgrade. Should be easy on the tanks.” He holds it out. Starscream doesn’t look away from the city. Thundercracker snaps his fingers. “Starscream?”

Starscream’s attention drifts reluctantly from the open sky. When it reaches Thundercracker his optic is alarmingly dim, an ember-glow behind scratched glass.

Thundercracker groans. He should have seen this coming. “Oh, for frag’s sake. That’s why you’re so loopy. What are your levels? Twelve percent? _Ten? _Don’t bother answering. It can’t be higher than that.”

He could be as low as eight if he’s unlucky. It’s another little quirk of flightframe construction: dropping below five percent fuel will put anyone into hard stasis, flightframe or grounder—but twelve percent triggers emergency power-save measures, and flightframes have a drastically different survival strategy. Where a grounder prioritizes thinking clearly as their body struggles, a seeker maintains full power to the flight systems above all else. It’s simple logic: no amount of clear thinking will save you from falling out of orbit. The downside is, you get low, you get stupid. Starscream always said Skywarp was stuck halfway in on account of half his processor running the interdimensional equations that let him teleport without atomizing himself.

Starscream’s never been a very nice person.

“Starscream.” Thundercracker snaps his fingers again. Starscream’s attention increases only marginally. “Look at me. You need to drink this.”

“Am I dying?” Starscream asks, thin and staticky.

“Don’t be so dramatic. Though you might be if you don’t get some fuel in you.”

“The afterspark isn’t real,” Starscream says, as if he hadn’t heard. He picks at the couch with a claw-tip. “I know that. This _is_ a dream, isn’t it?”

“What did I just say about being dramatic? Now drink.”

Starscream looks at the softly glowing energon cube, then back at Thundercracker. It’s only then Thundercracker realizes his plan’s fatal flaw: Starscream doesn’t have a mouth. He’s not even sure there’s an intake hidden in that helm, but—no, he _must_ have an intake, right? How else would he keep from starving? Unless the functionists grafted some kind of fuel injection system onto him just because they’re all horrorshow nightmare people who get up to things that would make Shockwave blush—but Decanter wouldn’t have bothered with something so complicated, he’s sure.

Well, he’s half sure.

Thundercracker sits beside him. Awkwardly, he says, “I don’t have any straws. Can you… I mean, how do you…”

“I’m tired.” Starscream’s waning attention drifts from the cube and back to the expanse of Primax, dull optic following the wisps of condensation that ring the towers. “I want to sleep.”

“Oh no you don’t. You need to—Starscream? Look at me.” If Starscream gets low enough to drop into hard stasis, it will take more than Thundercracker’s expertise to get him out again. “Where’s your primary intake? Is it still where it’s supposed to be?”

Starscream stares at him like he doesn’t understand the question. His optic flickers, and _frag_, Starscream’s levels are lower than he thought. He’s closing in on seven percent. It’s now or never. Starscream doesn’t resist when Thundercracker tugs him closer. Thundercracker goes looking for the intake. It seems wrong to stick his fingers into the hollow space under Starscream’s optic, all that nothingness where a face should be, but he crushes his squeamishness and traces cables until he finds the intake hidden in the recesses of his helm. He hopes for the sort of proboscis mod you see on most empuratees but doesn’t find it. It… Kind of looks like he might have had one, once.

He doesn’t now.

His reaction to that gets squashed down with everything else to be dealt with later. There’s no time for horror. What is he supposed to do? Can Starscream even hold a cube in those barely articulated claws? Can he feed himself at all? Why would they have _done_ this? Cruelty for the sake of cruelty, pointless except for inflicting suffering—or was it a barrier to escape? There’s a terrible logic in making him dependent on his captors. Then again, maybe it broke and just like the vocalizer they didn’t care enough to fix it.

So much for dignity. He’ll do this the hard way. Thundercracker tips Starscream’s helm back, dips his thumb in midgrade, and wipes a smear of fuel across Starscream’s intake. It cycles automatically. He presses the cube’s corner to it before it can close and pours out a dribble of fuel. The cube takes forever to empty. The whole time he’s terrified Starscream will choke on it.

Starscream’s flickering optic evens to a glow. When the cube's drained to its dregs Starscream still looks on the verge of toppling, but with exhaustion rather than near-stasis. Thundercracker sets the cube aside and his thumb rubs an absentminded circle on the side of Starscream’s helm. Starscream leans into it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Thundercracker’s spark stutters. It’s been a long time since their trine was on good terms, but before—everything that happened—there had been a time when…

There had been a time when things were better.

Thundercracker pulls Starscream’s slack weight closer, an ache deep in his spark. It had all ended so badly. Just when their trine had put the past behind them, Unicron had come to raze the last remnants of Old Cybertron and everything they’d built on its scarred hide. It’s a near thing Earth wasn’t destroyed next. They’d rallied together—the three of them—in a last-ditch effort at saving everything. Then Starscream had grown a hero complex and gotten himself killed. He’d died to save them as much as Optimus Prime, but no one seems to remember that other, smaller sacrifice, lost among all else broken that day. Optimus has proven more popular in death than he was in life. The humans have already erected a dozen statues of the prime and the Autobots across Earth—but Starscream’s name lurks on no one’s lips. They raise no monuments in his honor. The only ones who ever even mention him are Bumblebee and sometimes Windblade.

It’s typical. Why remember a seeker when you can remember a prime?

He can’t forget the last words he’d said to Starscream. They echo in his head—as he’d thrown him the talisman, as he’d turned tail to pull Skywarp’s aft out of the fire. _Seekers don’t leave each other behind_.

And he had, and Starscream died alone.

The mech in his arms isn’t _his_ Starscream any more than he’s this Starscream’s Thundercracker. He knows that. They might have come online the same person, but that was a long time ago. Not that it matters. He can tell himself they’re different people as much as he likes, but the quantum entanglement of the trine bond doesn’t care. It slips into place like a key cut almost right, jagged points scraping his edges raw. He can nearly see it if he shuts off his optics: his is the only bright, stable spark in the bond. There’s Starscream, weak and faltering, overlaid with the black hole of his dead self; at the bond’s third peak is the uneasy superposition of Skywarp (alive on Earth half a galaxy away, thread-faint with distance) and a torn hole scabbed with age, Skywarp again, dead as long as Thundercracker’s own alternate self. If he tries he senses the ghost of his much-younger self sitting uneasily upon him, an image worn with age in Starscream’s memory—a smear of blue, a handful of ashes.

He holds Starscream’s angular body closer, hand splayed on Starscream’s back where he keeps expecting wings and not finding them. Starscream’s optic has gone dark and Thundercracker’s spark lurches for a moment before realizing he’s only sleeping. He leans on Thundercracker, slack with recharge, still but for the minute stirring of his ventilation system. Thundercracker stays where he is as unfamiliar stars wheel overhead, the whole galaxy spread out above Primax’s neon glow.

He tells himself he couldn’t have known. That he had no reason to guess, not from halfway across the galaxy; not after Unicron’s chaos. That he has no reason to feel guilty for writing scripts and attending awards parties instead of coming here and searching for the lost apex of his trine. That Starscream’s condition isn’t actually his fault.

It doesn’t help.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Thundercracker says, so quietly that Starscream doesn’t stir. “If I’d known, I never would have—I would’ve gotten you out. I promise.”

The spacebridge runs on a schedule. It will open tomorrow and not again after that for another decacycle. He plans to be out of here with Starscream as fast as possible. The studios can be as mad at him as they want. He doesn’t care. He’s getting Starscream off this planet if it’s the last thing he does, but in the meantime, he can’t bring himself to move.

Thundercracker stays on the couch with Starscream, developing a crick in his neck as Starscream slumps further and further into a heap in his lap. The lure of recharge tugs at him as well; it steals over him slowly. Outside the window the stars keep up their wheeling, silent and remote. They were here long before New Cybertron existed, and they’ll no doubt be here long after it’s gone. The soft light of distant suns spills into the penthouse. No one is awake to notice.

The next thing Thundercracker knows, the morning light hits him full in the face.

He jolts upright and regrets it. His backstrut aches from recharging all scrunched up on the couch. He squints, disoriented, at the glittering sprawl of Primax spread out below. He can’t for the life of him think why he slept here when there’s a perfectly good recharge slab in the next room, all ready to go and big enough to fit four. Or three shuttles if they’re friendly, and shuttles usually are. He must have overdone it at Decanter’s party—oh frag, _Decanter’s party_. The engex, and the arena, and_ double frag,_ _Starscream!_ Thundercracker leaps up, scanning the penthouse frantically for—

Starscream perches on a tall stool on the other side of the suite, one leg crossed over the other, elbows resting on the bartop. If his optic is hazy it’s only that the glass is old and cheap. It fixes unerringly on Thundercracker. His attention is razor-sharp, his long, inelegant claws dangling in false relaxation, his posture a thin layer of calm stretched over coiled-spring tension. His wing stubs twitch. He’s ready to flee or explode into violence. That he hasn’t is only because he’s still balanced on the knife’s edge of which.

“You can’t possibly be who I think you are,” Starscream says. His voice is no better than last night, a thin staticky rasp nearly as processed as Soundwave’s, the emotion in it so controlled that if Thundercracker didn’t know Starscream so well as he does he wouldn’t realize it was there at all.

“It’s me, Starscream.” Thundercracker makes no move toward him. “I’m Thundercracker.”

“Whatever new _game_ this is, it’s sick. I won’t play it.”

“There’s no game. I got you out of Decanter’s fragged-up arena and I’m getting you off this disaster of a planet. When the spacebridge opens—”

“Cut the slag!” Starscream snaps. “I bet you had a big laugh at me falling all over myself last night, but if you think I don’t know you’re just waiting for me to embarrass myself again, you and your council friends are stupider than you look.” Thundercracker takes a step closer. Starscream’s optic contracts to a pinprick. “Touch me and I’ll ram a claw so far up your aft port Primus himself will taste it.”

“I’m not a functionist and I have nothing to do with the council.” Thundercracker hesitates. How to explain what’s happened to New Cybertron in the last decivorn when he doesn’t understand it himself? “You know they’re dead, right?”

“You expect me to believe—what do you mean they’re _dead?_”

“They, uh—sorry, this’ll sound insane but I swear it’s the truth—they turned the planet into a weapon and dragged it through a dimensional rift to a parallel universe because… I don’t actually understand why. I think Megatron exploded them all somehow. Do you remember any of that?”

“I remember the tower shaking and the fights being cancelled. I remember starving in my cell because they forgot me. They do that, sometimes.” Starscream slides off his chair. He stalks toward Thundercracker. He’d been wrong last night: this Starscream doesn’t move like his own. Not really. There’s the exaggerated stride to make up for his new weight distribution, the swing of arms both longer and heavier than they should be, but also a strange, predatory aspect he’s only seen on beastmodes; as if Starscream’s grown so used to fighting in close quarters he’s forgotten there was ever anything else. “Then everything went on like before.”

Thundercracker winces. “If I'd known you were here—”

“Can it. Why should I believe anything you say? You swoop in with some wild story and I’m supposed to swoon into your arms like an idiot? I don’t know who you are, I don’t know how you know what he looked like, and I don’t know how you faked the trine bond, but I want you out. _Now_.”

“I’m not your Thundercracker, exactly, but I am _a_ Thundercracker. The dimensional rift—”

“You _aren’t,_” Starscream hisses. “He’s dead. They’re all dead! You’re some shell of a council warbuild painted up blue with fake wings, and I’m not falling for it!”

“My wings aren’t fake! Why would I do that?”

“Why do any of you do anything? I bet there are cameras in the walls and this is all being broadcast so you rustfraggers can laugh at it. You won’t let me live and you won’t let me die and I’m _so fragging tired I could kill something—_”

The rage and pain that lash through the trine bond are so sharp and unexpected Thundercracker gasps. He tries to soothe it automatically, a wash of field, a wave of _I’m-here-you’re-fine_, and Starscream reels as if slapped. Like kindness is a weapon.

“Stop it,” Starscream says. “Don’t. That’s not for you.”

“Starscream—”

“Stay away from me.” Starscream raises his claws. His optic is very wide and very bright. “Stay back or I swear to Mortilus’ scraplet-chewed aft—”

Someone pounds on the door. They both freeze, staring at one another.

Starscream hisses, “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” Thundercracker hisses back. “Why would I know?”

The knock comes again, harder, three sharp impacts from a solid, heavy fist. “Primax enforcement office! Open up!”

Thundercracker stiffens. Starscream leaps to his feet. “Fragging _pit_.”

Of course Decanter couldn’t let it lie. Not after being humiliated in front of half the planet’s nobility. Of _course_ New Cybertron’s enforcers are happy to retrieve a minister’s perfectly sentient property. He wishes he’d skipped the hotel and flown straight for the spacebridge—at the same time he knows it wouldn’t have done him any good. The spacebridge opens on a schedule. It’s still six joors until the next passage. The enforcers would have found them just as easily there.

He wishes again that he’d shot Decanter and all his guests besides. Peacetime laws can get smelted.

Beside him Starscream stands statue-still, barely ventilating, optic fixed on the door. His claws twitch. Thundercracker jerks his thumb at the window. “Get out the back way. I’ll hold them off.”

Starscream’s optic cycles a little wider. “You mean the balcony?”

“Yes!”

“In case it’s escaped your notice, whoever you are, _I can’t fly!_”

On that note, the enforcers kick the door in.

It flies off its hinges. The penthouse’s security shutters slam into automatic lockdown, cutting off the morning light. Thundercracker’s first instinct is to shove Starscream out of the line of fire—which is, in retrospect, stupid. No one comes in guns blazing. All it does is knock him down. Starscream screeches indignance. The enforcers pile on as well and the three of them pin Starscream to the ground at wrists, neck, and hip; he twists in their clutches, making a sound not unlike the rattlesnake Buster once startled out of the grass. Satisfied that everything is under control, the lead enforcer leaves Starscream to his companions and goes for Thundercracker.

_Amateurs_, Thundercracker thinks, and stands.

The enforcer hesitates at the size of him. At full extension Thundercracker’s wingspan is almost equal to his height, his frame solid and powerful. He’s pretty sure the enforcers are the same mechs he saw talking to Decanter up in the stands. They’re all heavy bruiser types in contrasting colors: black and white, rust and gray, goldenrod and navy. But they’re _civilian_ bruisers. He could take them all in a fair fight. Two are pursuit vehicles, the third some kind of transport.

“Thundercracker of Old Vos, you’re under arrest,” the lead enforcer says.

As little as Thundercracker likes to see Starscream manhandled, he’s still trying to solve things with no murder. Plus he doesn’t want to explain to Marissa how he got banned from an entire planet. “Got a warrant?”

The enforcer transfers the file. Thundercracker glances at it. It looks legit, unfortunately. Even if they’re working for Decanter, they’re actual enforcers. That makes things harder. When he looks back at the enforcer, though, he could almost swear he recognizes him. He’s smaller than the other two, the frame’s a little off, and the paint’s different, but…

“Barricade?” Thundercracker asks.

Barricade looks startled. “How do you know my—never mind. It doesn’t matter. Just come quietly and—”

“What are the charges?”

“I _just_ gave you the warrant. Read it.”

“I want to hear it out loud.” Thundercracker smiles one of Skywarp’s smiles, finely tuned for maximum annoyance. Barricade never could stand it. If the enforcers escalate first, it’ll give him some legal leeway after he stomps them all flat. “Wouldn’t want there to be a mistake.”

Barricade mutters something about airhead flightframes and pulls the warrant up in his HUD. Thundercracker sees it reflected on the inside of his optic. “On the authority of Primax Enforcement Office Precinct 113, you, Thundercracker of Old Vos, stand charged with theft, uttering threats of arson and bodily harm to a respected member of society, disruption of the peace, destruction of property—”

Thundercracker hums. “Yeah, I did most of that.”

Barricade makes a noise like he’s choked on his own tongue. He looks flabbergasted. That’s a good word, _flabbergasted_. He’ll have to remember it when he gets back to writing.

“One thing, though,” Thundercracker adds. “There was no theft. Kidnapping, maybe. Then again, I’m not so sure it was kidnapping, either.” He gestures at Starscream, who’s moved on from rattling to ominous ticking. “What does the Primax Enforcement Office have to say about cutting people’s faces off and keeping them like mechanimals? I don’t think Starscream was a big fan of Decanter’s _generous hospitality_.”

The mech pinning Starscream does a double take. “Is that true?”

“Of course not, Highspeed. It’s a drone,” Barricade says.

“He’s not a _drone_,” Thundercracker growls, underscored with the bass rumble of his engines.

The third enforcer leaps to join Barricade, shaking his arm into a partial transformation—a wicked shock baton all crackling with lightning. Apparently they aren’t into semantics. Highspeed, having a pit of a time trying to handcuff a resisting Starscream, looks up in alarm. His optics flick from the baton to Thundercracker and back again. From the way they widen Thundercracker knows that (alone, perhaps, among his fellow enforcers) he’s the only one with the slightest grain of sense. Brawling with a warframe is a whole lot different from pushing civilians around. Even now Thundercracker has targeting solutions running as a background process, nearly subliminal.

“Bluelight,” Highspeed says, slowly, “there’s no reason to do that now. He’s cooperating.”

“Decanter had instructions.”

“Don’t tell him that, idiot,” Barricade groans. “Look, get the drone under control. Thundercracker, you’re still under arrest. Give me your wrists and just—”

“I won’t _just_.” Thundercracker’s engines throb louder. The air takes on the tang of ozone, dust motes vibrating to the pulse of his spark. “I gave you the chance to be reasonable. If what _Decanter_ wants is more important than what he’s done, you can go frag yourself on a rusty piston. You want Starscream? You’re going through me.”

Bluelight sneers. “We already have your little drone.”

“Do you?”

Starscream, never one to be ignored, chooses that moment to twist free of Highspeed’s grip, leap up like a turbofox on circuit boosters and punch Highspeed in the face, claws-first. Highspeed goes down screaming. Starscream rips his claws back, dripping pink. “You think you can take me, you scrap-sucking scraplet fraggers? I’ll rip out your fuel tank and feed it to you!”

Everything immediately goes to slag.

The penthouse is tiny, is the thing. And okay, it’s big for a penthouse, but for a five-mech brawl? _Tiny_. Thundercracker’s combat subroutines engage and he sweeps his wings to clear some space. The nice couch by the window goes toppling—a good thing, because it knocks the gun out of Barricade’s hand. Barricade curses. On the other side of the room Starscream raises his claws to stab Highspeed again.

Bluelight smashes him over the head with the shock baton. Starscream howls. His whole chassis crackles blue. He slumps sideways, twitching and smoking. When Bluelight grabs him by the collar faring he jolts back to life, whirls, jams his claws into the soft place at the juncture of Bluelight’s hip and thigh, and rips free in a spray of fuel and torn wiring. Bluelight shouts something unintelligible. Starscream’s already skittered back to a more defensible position, limping, ready to strike again. Sparks dance on his plating, his optic too bright. Again Thundercracker thinks of him as _feral_. If he had teeth they’d be bared in threat, or a grin. For Starscream they’re usually the same thing.

Bluelight takes another swing. Thundercracker curses the end of the war and it being in general a bad idea to kill enforcers and tackles Bluelight from behind. They crash to the ground. He hears more than feels the bullets pepper his back (Barricade must have retrieved his gun. It doesn’t matter. The damage report shrugs them off as insignificant) but he _definitely_ feels it when Bluelight jams that shock baton between plates and turns on the power.

Thundercracker screams through his teeth even as his system reroutes pathways to deal with the surge. He smells his own burnt wiring. _Frag_ being nice. He grabs Bluelight’s arm to rip the whole thing off.

Except he doesn’t. His hand doesn’t move. He tells it to grab Bluelight, to wrench the limb from its socket and pull, and _nothing happens_. He tries again, and again, but his body won’t obey, and he wonders… Why he wanted to do that in the first place.

Why rip an enforcer’s arm off? It doesn’t seem like a very nice thing to do. Would a good citizen fight an enforcer? Of course not, and he’s a good citizen, as well-behaved and compliant as a citizen should be. Thundercracker’s head swims. He topples as Bluelight shoves him sideways and hits the floor in a crash of plating. He lies there staring at the steely gray of the lockdown shutters. They seem depthless, as if they go on forever. Bluelight kicks him, but that’s fine. He doesn’t really feel it, anyway.

“Finally.” Highspeed wipes the energon from the long gouges across his faceplate. He laughs nervously. “Primus, he’s a big one.”

“Doesn’t matter how big he is,” Bluelight grunts. “They go down just the same.”

Barricade grimaces. “And he’ll die just the same when we shoot him through the spark. _Frag_, what a mess. This wasn’t supposed to happen here. Get the drone compliant and let’s go. I’m not paid enough to deal with this.”

Starscream stands framed against the blocked-off window, frozen, claws ready—but his optic is on Thundercracker, something desperate in it. Something pleading. Thundercracker watches placidly and wonders if Starscream knows that the best thing to do is sit quietly for the enforcers to decide what to do with them. It’s right there in his code: in the event of catastrophe, step one: kneel. Step two: wait.

“The little slaglicker stabbed me, ‘Cade.” Bluelight raises his shock stick. He turns up the voltage. Its whine pitches high. “It looks pretty beat up. Decanter won’t notice a few more dents.”

“Whatever, just get it done. I’m not catching a rust infection off this lump of scrap.”

Starscream steps back and back. His optic swings, hunted. His wing stubs touch the lockdown shutter. He flinches. Thundercracker watches, dully. It’s none of his business, but… But something isn’t right. He doesn’t know what. His systems checks come back clean, so he runs them again. They pop up the same. Something nags at him, something…

No. They’re _too_ clean. Everything’s a hundred percent, bright and shiny, factory new. The specs are wrong. They think he’s the civilian flightframe he used to be vorns and vorns ago, but not even quite the right make, and he can’t find his weaponry, and his personal ident is blank, and his comms are offline, and—no, _they wouldn’t have._

Wartime countermeasures snap into place. Thundercracker digs ruthlessly into his own programming. The _good citizen_ filter crumples and falls away. Beneath it a seething mass of foreign code runs rampant through his systems, sinking its teeth into every line and subroutine. With the filter gone, he feels the bullets in his back. He feels them _digging. _They burrow like screwworms, crawling through plating to infect and hijack his systems. _Cortical bullets. _Just another gift from New Cybertron, each layer worse than the last. Even Shockwave had the sense not to build things like that. Or at least he did once both armies declared them war crimes. Fortunately, Starscream had been paranoid enough to install his trine with precautions.

Thundercracker rips himself free of the virus as his system roots it out. He lurches up, throws himself at Starscream and spins just in time to catch the impact of Bluelight’s juiced-up shock stick across his own back. It comes down right on his wing joint. He goes rigid. Vulnerable metal crumples. His whole system glitches out for half a klik as sensitive networks fry. The charge that would’ve sent Starscream convulsing disperses painfully; Starscream jerks in his arms with its residue. 

Thundercracker punches Bluelight so hard he hits the opposite wall. Barricade panics and open fire. Worse than the rattle is the sensation of the bullets drilling into him. His HUD fills with errors as they inject their malicious payload. His system works on purging the code now that it knows what to look for, but he can’t keep this up. They need to get out. They need to do it _now_. He can’t keep Starscream safe like this. He’s tried doing the smart thing and the violent thing. What else is there? What would Skywarp do?

The stupidest possible thing he could think of, probably. And it’d work, too, because that’s just Skywarp’s luck. Thundercracker seizes control of his glitching systems long enough to redirect full power to his turbines.

“Turn off your audials,” Thundercracker says, just loud enough for Starscream to hear.

“Do _not_ transform!” Barricade shouts. “That is an order!”

Thundercracker hits full throttle and lets off a sonic boom.

They blast out through the penthouse’s fancy windows and lockdown shutters, metal starbursted behind them, glass following in a glittering spray. Everything in the room that can shatter, shatters. The enforcers drop, screaming, inaudible, stunned in the wreckage—alive, probably, because Thundercracker’s nice that way. He doesn’t look back. He can’t afford to. He completes his transformation in midair with Starscream clasped to his front, limp and half-dazed even with the warning.

They streak through the sky above Primax. Thundercracker's own acceleration strains; his wing _hurts_. His diagnostics tell him it’s fine and broken and brand-new and about to fall off. All he knows for sure is the creak of stressed metal, the growing reek of burnt wires, and the smell of energon. He might be slightly on fire. The shock baton did more damage than he’d thought. Smashing through the security shutter half-transformed didn’t help. He _feels_ the stress even if his system can’t find it; every turn he makes, every adjustment sends pain jolting through. The seam creaks.

If he can reach the spacebridge they’ll be fine. If he can claim asylum from his own people, if he can duck through it unnoticed, if, if, _if. _He ignores all the warning signs and pushes himself just that little bit faster.

His wing gives out with a deafening _crack_ at thirty thousand feet above Primax.


	4. Chapter 4

Thundercracker screams curses into the wind as they plummet, struggling to stabilize their flight on one wing, trailing fat beads of fuel behind them. His wing dangles by a few wires and its internal mount. The outer shell is almost split. Every time he tries to use it the wind threatens to rip it away. He toggles his comms automatically to call for help but there’s only dead air and no one to call: no Decepticons, no Marissa, no trine. Just him and Starscream, falling.

Starscream stirs in his grip, half dazed from the point-blank sonic boom. “Thundercracker?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine,” Thundercracker promises.

“Need to reach th’ spaceport,” he slurs. “We’re late. Where’s Skywarp?”

So, great, he’s probably knocked a couple of Starscream’s wires loose doing that. He latches his docking clamps tighter. “Yep, on our way, just landing. Little bit of a detour. Don’t look down.”

Like most flightframes, Thundercracker has never understood the fear of falling. He feels he might understand it now. The roads and towers of Primax grow larger with terrifying speed and there’s nothing he can do about it—nothing but stupid, bad, _terrible_ ideas. He should have known what he was getting into when he went for the Skywarp solution(™), all chaos and impulse. All he can do is ride it out and hope not to die.

“Hold on,” he tells Starscream. Thundercracker twists backwards, flips himself over and dials his thrusters to full burn. The force of deceleration groans through his frame. It’s barely controllable and absorbs only some of their velocity. Distant Primax grows larger and larger until they’re falling through the jagged peaks of towers, whipping by windows and walls, past shops and parks and inhabited spaces and the light dims as they leave the towers behind, as they fall through lacework layers of roads upon roads into the twilit lower city, and still they’re going too fast.

Thundercracker transforms at the last moment, curls around Starscream, and takes the impact on his armored back and side.

They skid across an alley floor trailing sparks. Metal rips. Cables tear. Thundercracker clenches his teeth so as not to scream. They crash into the wall at the end in a heap of discarded packing material and rusty trash. It’s the roughest landing he’s had since Unicron, and that ended with Skywarp missing most of his torso. Still, he can take it. Starscream would never have survived a crash like this alone, not diminished and civilian-armored. A statistic swims up in his dizzy processor, something from back before the war: the prohibitive cost of repairing cold-constructed flightframes, and the shuffling grounded seekers in the dead end who never did last long.

When his gyros stop spinning he tries to sit up. He regrets it. He drops back down, his right wing a mass of pain: cracked down the middle, nearly severed, bent all along its edge. One of his thrusters throbs and produces an ominous rattle when he tests it. His readouts helpfully inform him that his flight integrity is compromised. Like it or not, he’s not going anywhere except on foot. At least the cortical bullets have fallen silent; his countermeasures are good for something. He lets his helm fall back against the filthy alley floor.

“I hate this planet,” he groans.

It takes a few kliks for Starscream to stir. He squirms his way out from under the heavy weight of Thundercracker’s arms, shakes his head hard as if to clear it, and stumbles to his feet. He’s in better shape than Thundercracker at the moment: a few new plasma burns, but nothing serious. Starscream stares at Thundercracker, head tilted, then back up the way they came; up through the dim damp layers of the lower city to that shining place above.

Thundercracker doesn’t need the trine bond to know what he’s thinking, or to feel the wave of hungry, knife-sharp longing at that distant glimpse of sky. He sees it in Starscream’s posture, in the way he strains for it, wing nubs twitching. Neither does he miss the considering look Starscream gives him when he turns back around. His shape might be different, but the body language of Starscream plotting is all too familiar.

“No schemes,” Thundercracker tells him. “I’m too tired for that.” He rolls onto his knees and tries to rise. Pain shoots through his damaged thruster the moment he puts weight on it. He hisses and sinks back down. Not only can he not fly, he can barely walk. They’ll be sitting cyberducks for the enforcers or any other goons Decanter cares to send after them. _Frag._

“At least you learned how to fight, Thundercracker,” Starscream says.

Thundercracker’s head jolts up. Relief chases away some of the pain. “You believe me?”

“I don’t know what I believe.” Starscream walks a slow circle around him, optic up close and intent. “I believe you’re a real flightframe. I believe _you_ believe you’re Thundercracker, and I haven’t felt a sonic boom like that since—for a very long time.” His pincers twitch, still smeared with Highspeed’s drying energon. His gaze returns to the far-away sky. More softly, he adds, “And you do look like him.”

“That’s because I _am _him.”

“If he was bigger and fatter and had no sense of aesthetics.”

“_Aesthetics?_ I look amazing, I’ll have you know. I’ve been in movies.”

Starscream snorts. “You expect me to believe you’re a holovid star?”

“I’m a director. And my frame isn’t fat! It’s well-armored. How would I have survived the war as some fragile little civilian tetrajet?”

“That’s even less believable than _holovid star_,” Starscream says. “What war?”

Thundercracker laughs, incredulous—a short, sharp bark that takes him by surprise. What war_, Primus_. Of course Starscream doesn’t know (how could he?) but where does he even begin? The war is the black hole that swallowed up the last four million years of all their lives. It’s like not knowing about gravity. “Remember what I said about dimensions and parallel universes?”

Starscream’s optic narrows. “I remember you ranting something to that effect.”

“Yeah, okay. So the thing is, on _my_ Cybertron, the Functionists got taken down early. All this,” he waves vaguely, encompassing Primax, “got razed about fifty thousand vorns ago.”

“_Good_.”

“Except so did pretty much everything else. We were at war until like a decivorn ago. See, there were the Autobots and the Decepticons. Megatron rose against the primes, and—” He launches into a drastically condensed version of the war that left Old Cybertron barren and their race decimated. Starscream looks dubious and Thundercracker can’t blame him. It sounds as far-fetched as, well, parallel universes. If some seeker crashed into his life claiming to be a version of his dead trinemate from another dimension, he’d take it with a pretty hefty grain of sodium chloride too.

Well, maybe not _that_ big a grain. He’s seen a lot of weird slag in his life. Day by day it only seems to be getting weirder.

“You know what, forget it,” Thundercracker says. “It isn’t important. We need to be offworld before the enforcers catch up. I can’t pull that trick a second time, and whatever Decanter has planned for us, I’m pretty sure we won’t like it.”

“There is no _offworld_. Not for us. No shuttles, no private ships. The ports are closed without the right credentials and even then—”

“Not anymore.” Thundercracker tries levering himself up again. He manages a short, hobbling step. His systems complain viciously (and sure, he’s technically had worse, but during the war pain chips had been as common as silica wafers). For a moment he considers rerouting his own pain receptors, but that always makes things worse. “Like I said, things have changed. The functionists are done. If we hop the spacebridge to Earth, Decanter can’t touch us.”

“What’s Earth?”

“An organic planet. You’ll love it—well, you probably won’t. It’s wet and alive and _weird_, but it’s still a million times better than here. It’ll be great! I have a house and everything. You can live with me. And I have a dog! Her name is Buster. A dog is like if a turbofox was smaller, organic, and less bitey. She rides in my cockpit sometimes.”

Starscream looks more dubious with every word, but Thundercracker keeps up a stream of inane chatter as Starscream gets in under his arm and bolsters him up. He gets the impression that, rather than a liar, Starscream now just thinks he’s nuts. It’s a step up. Sort of.

He manages a limping walk with Starscream to lean on. Thundercracker’s encouraged until he remembers the spacebridge is halfway across Primax and several levels above. His chronometer ticks down to the spacebridge’s scheduled opening. They might make it if they take the main roads, but they can’t move quickly and they aren’t inconspicuous. Even damaged, Thundercracker’s wings are starkly obvious. There’s no passing them off as anything but what they are (not to mention the damage itself, or the energon spattered on them both). They can’t afford to be seen. If the enforcers catch up, that’s it. The alleys might just keep them out of sight for long enough.

They make bad time.

Starscream struggles under Thundercracker’s weight, stripped-down frame not meant to bear the strain of heavy armor. Thundercracker isn't doing much better. He’d thought he knew where he was going, but the farther they walk the less he’s sure they’re headed in the right direction. His navigation systems get confused in the lower city’s labyrinthine walls; they keep trying to overlay leftover maps of Iacon, fifty thousand vorns out of date, dormant in his memory banks until now—maps which have very little in common with Primax’s current shape. Things have been changed, demolished, overbuilt. He’d forgotten how much of Cybertron was outward encrustations like an organic pearl, surface on surface, its heart buried in the dark.

“We’re walking in circles,” Starscream says. “I’ve seen that trash pile three times.”

“Every pile of trash looks like every other pile of trash.”

Starscream sneers. No easy feat without a mouth. “I’m so glad I have a trash expert on hand—_frag!”_

The low, distinctive wail of an enforcer’s siren echoes through the lower city. Starscream jolts him sideways into a cross-alley. Thundercracker’s knee twists and buckles. He topples, cursing. Only Starscream keeps him from smashing his face on the alley floor. The siren draws closer. Flickering red lights reflect at odd angles.

“Get up!” Starscream says. “Hurry. Get up or I’ll leave you behind!”

Thundercracker curses louder. There’s nothing for it: he reroutes the worst of his internal sensors. The sudden lack of pain is so good it leaves him dizzy. He lurches upright feeling like he's floating. “We can’t get caught.”

“_Thank_ you, _Obvious Prime_.”

Starscream grips his arm and hauls him down a warren of abandoned passages and byways, each smaller and filthier than the last. They’re less streets than the cracks between the foundations of skyscrapers. Thundercracker grits his teeth, dismisses the errors and warnings still plaguing his HUD, and keeps up. If his wing was working they could be across the city in minutes. If they could reach a medic who could fix him—joors, orns, it’s hard to say. Autorepair might fix him up enough to fly but it will take far longer than they have.

Starscream swears when they hit a trash-strewn dead end. He turns back but the sirens grow louder. He stands frozen, quivering, claw-tips digging into Thundercracker’s chassis. Thundercracker refuses to let it end here, not after living through the war and _Unicron_ and coming out the other side; he refuses to let _Starscream_ end here. A little voice that sounds rather like Starscream whispers to him that he might not have any choice; that sometimes the worst happens, inevitable.

He tells it to shut up and mind its own business.

Very little sunlight reaches here; the lower city lives in permanent twilight, all neon and dusk. In the alley there’s not even that. He glances around for anything useful but the trash is just trash—ripped packaging, empty containers, depleted circuit boosters that seem old and weathered enough to predate his own forging. A pile of crates block an alcove in the alley wall, and behind them, a flash of… Purple?

Thundercracker pushes the crates aside. They topple with an almighty crash. He cocks his head. Painted onto the back of the alcove is a large, sloppy Decepticon insignia, so vividly violet in the alley’s dimness it almost seems to glow. Above it is written: _Megatron will save us._

It’s such a familiar thing that for a moment it’s as if he really _has_ travelled back in time. He has the sudden, vivid memory of keeping watch while Starscream and Skywarp painted slogans and glued recruitment posters to the city’s foundations, all of them bright with the prospect of the future to come, with revolution, with Megatron’s poetry and rhetoric dragging them along.

Then it passes. He’s back in a dirty alley, damaged, wounded, hunted, with a person who both _is_ and _is not _his dead trinemate. Thundercracker’s been thinking of him as fundamentally _Starscream_, the same Starscream he’d known for vorns upon vorns, but it isn’t true, is it? How alike are they really? Trine bond aside, this is a person he barely knows.

Never mind. It doesn’t matter right now. He shuffles painstakingly forward. The purple paint is cheap, flaky stuff that comes away on his fingertips, crumbling at a touch. Protected by the city’s high walls or not, the first lashes of acid rain would set it running. It can’t have been here for long. Only then does he register the well of shadow where the alcove wall doesn’t meet the ground—where debris and a loose sheet of metal almost but does not quite cover a shape. He pushes it aside. Beneath it is the recessed hatch of an access tunnel. Within that hatch is a ladder leading down.

An unwilling smile spreads across his face. Primax might not be Iacon anymore, but some things are the same. The underlayers are one of them. They’d spent a lot of time down there, once. He clears the debris further out of the way. “Come on, Starscream.”

Starscream looks doubtful. “In there?”

“The underlayers cross the whole city. Even if we don’t make the spacebridge opening, we can camp out right underneath until the next one.”

More doubtfully, Starscream repeats, “In _there?”_

“I have maps. They can’t have changed much—they were old even when Iacon was new.” He doesn’t mention how little use his maps have been so far. The ladder’s first rung is rusty, but it holds. He descends until he’s chest-deep in the ground. “It’s this or the enforcers.”

Starscream makes a frustrated sound and follows him. They descend one after the other, Thundercracker first, then Starscream. Thundercracker dials up his running lights. It’s cramped and dark down there, everything smelling of dust and old metal. The lightstrips that once lined these passages have long since died. Their biolights paint the edges of things in a soft spill of red and blue between them; it’s suffocatingly silent but for the distant hum of the city’s workings. Starscream glares suspiciously at all the dark corners. Unease crawls up Thundercracker’s backstrut. He’d thought the empty lower city was timing, but the underlayers are quieter still. Why isn’t anyone here?

“Starscream,” Thundercracker says, then winces at the way his voice echoes. “Maybe we should switch to comms. What’s your frequency?”

[Same as always,] Starscream sends. It surprises Thundercracker to realize he’s right. It’s the defunct frequency Starscream used to use before he was air commander and had to start screening his calls. [This place feels wrong.]

[I know what you mean. Did you cover the hatch?]

[I’m grounded, not an idiot.]

Thundercracker pulls up his maps of Old Iacon’s undercity; all the twisting, wriggling forks of it like an organic’s veins. The spacebridge is more or less due east. They set off through the underlayers and despite Thundercracker’s still vaguely aching leg he can’t help but feel a little better. Wandering damaged through Iacon’s secret places, escaping the enforcers, plotting an escape—it’s just like old times.

It quickly becomes obvious that, like the twisting streets above, Primax’s underlayers are really nothing like Iacon’s at all.

It’s not just the layout, though Thundercracker keeps catching glimpses of junctions and passages he swears he knows, but not quite. It’s the pitch-blackness except for the insufficient glow their biolights cast. It’s the dry, musty air and the held-breath silence. Even the noise of Cybertron’s internal machinery seems muffled. No one is _supposed_ to live in the underlayers, but the ones Thundercracker remembers were ripe for criminal activity, glutted with chaos and black markets; in his memory the sub-passages are the cramped, stinking, riotous places Skywarp liked to drag them all when he had the shanix. Where the music played all night and the drinks came smelling odd but with a kick like Devastator on a bender. He has fond and not-so-fond memories of those places, but it looks as if no one has been here in decavorns.

It sets the back of his neck prickling worse. If not for Starscream under his arm he might’ve turned around by now—better to see if the enforcers have gone and to reach the spacebridge damaged than to wander in circles until he starves—but Starscream throws all his calculations out of whack. He’s barely said a word in the last joor. Thundercracker longs to break the silence but doesn’t know with what. Skywarp would blurt out whatever came into his head, but all the things on Thundercracker’s tongue are horrible: _how did you lose your face? How long did Decanter have you? What about before that?_

_What happened to you, Starscream?_

[I think we’re lost,] Thundercracker says, instead.

[You said you had maps!]

[I do! This place is all twisty and wrong.] A terrible thought occurs to him. [Oh no. When the functionists transformed the planet, it must have—]

[Wait, they actually did that?]

[It doesn’t matter, they scrambled the undercity! No wonder we keep having to backtrack.]

[It's fine as long as we're going in the right direction.]  Starscream seems like he’s trying to convince himself. He grunts faintly as Thundercracker leans on him. [This would be so much faster if you were lighter. Who ever heard of a fat seeker?]

[I told you, it’s armor.]

Starscream’s narrow head tilts to look at him, skeptical.

[I said we had a war. Just because this planet rolled in from a parallel universe is no reason to go around switching frames. You should be glad I didn’t! It kept you from dying in the crash. I forgot how delicate we all used to be.]

[I’m not _delicate_.]

[You’re a dainty paper airplane.]

[I am not _dainty_—what’s paper?]

[It’s this organic, uh, dried cellulose pulp… Never mind.] They limp along in silence for a few kliks, but Thundercracker has never needed the trine bond to know when Starscream is thinking too hard. He can practically hear Starscream’s processor whirring. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed at all: without a distraction, Starscream will think himself into knots. [What’s the problem?]

[Nothing,] Starscream says, too quickly.

[And I’m a sentient scraplet swarm.]

Starscream narrows his optic at him. [That thing you said in the arena.]

[What thing?]

[Did it really happen?] Starscream’s helm rises. He looks Thundercracker in the face, optic piercingly intent. His grip on Thundercracker’s arm tightens. [Did we really burn the towers? Did we lock those rustfraggers inside and let them—]

[Hold that thought.]

Thundercracker cranks his auditory inputs to maximum and concentrates. He could _swear_ he’d heard something. Just for a second, the tiniest scrape of metal on metal, such a tiny thing he never would have noticed it if not for that oppressive silence. He squints into the dark and thinks uneasily of the things that had infested Old Cybertron’s underlayers after a few vorns of abandonment: dwellers and empties and scraplet hives, the ravenous and the desperate. The functionists could’ve hidden anything in these tunnels.

Maybe there’s a reason they’re abandoned.

[What is it?] Starscream asks.

[Did you hear that?]

[Hear what?]

[Hear—there it is again!]

Blue light flares at the end of the tunnel, blindingly bright to Thundercracker’s oversensitive optics. His combat subsystems take over. He opens fire. Recoil unbalances his unsteady frame; Starscream props him upright, cursing. Thundercracker sweeps his guns sideways and locks onto his target—

“**_Don’t shoot!_** I’m unarmed!”

Thundercracker freezes in place, blinking away muzzle flash. A mech stands flattened to the far wall, just visible in the collective glow of their biolights. He’s bigger than a minibot but shorter than Starscream, his body heavy and compact, single blue optic round and pale with terror, two pairs of pincers held protectively in front of him. Another empuratee. He’s orange, Thundercracker thinks. Maybe red? It’s hard to tell in this light. The wall above his head is scorched black with smoking weapons discharge.

Thundercracker lets his arm fall to his side. He pretends it’s deliberate and not simple, overwhelming exhaustion. “Where did you come from?”

“I could ask you the same thing! Who are you to be skulking around in the access tunnels, pointing guns in innocent mechs’ faces? I could’ve been killed!”

“What face?” Starscream rasps.

“Excuse me? Even from a fellow member of the extremitally-challenged community, that is _incredibly rude—_”

Thundercracker groans. “_Primus_, Starscream, can we not do this right now?”

The little empuratee does a double take. His optic cycles rapidly and refocuses. “I’m sorry, did you say _Starscream?”_

“What’s it to you?” Starscream sneers.

“It’s—nothing, I suppose. Never mind.” The mech’s optic darts back to Thundercracker and sticks, staring. It’s less invasive than the covetous stares of Decanter’s guests but Thundercracker feels the attention crawling over his wings all the same. They twitch irritably, sending a stab of pain through his damaged struts.

“My optics are down here,” Thundercracker says.

The mech jolts, guilty at being caught. “I, ah—of course, yes. I just can’t believe—you must be from the parallel Cybertron! Though technically ours is the parallel, seeing as we traveled here from another universe and only lately—well, that doesn’t matter.” He wrings his pincers together. “If you don’t mind my asking, were you one of Megatron’s Decepticons? It’s only that most flightframes were, and you do seem quite, er, well-defended.”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Thundercracker says. Then he relents, because he feels kind of bad for almost shooting the mech. “I mean, yes, but what does that have to do with anything? What are you even doing down here, anyway? Who _are_ you?”

The little empuratee draws himself up straight. “Damus of Tarn. My friends call me Glitch.”


	5. Chapter 5

Starscream makes a harsh, staticky cough that’s probably laughter. “Your friends call you what?”

“It’s because—never mind.” Damus’s optic flattens into an aggrieved line. “What are _you_ doing down here? These tunnels are officially off-limits, and for good reason. They’re a warren. If the enforcers catch you I don’t know what they’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant.”

Thundercracker resettles his weight. He winces as the rim of his thruster crumples just a little bit more. “Who do you think we’re running from?”

Damus shuffles closer. “What did you _do?_”

In all their biolights combined, Thundercracker’s damaged wing and torn side seem worse than ever. Wires spark. Energon oozes slowly but steadily to drip onto the floor in magenta spots. That he can’t really feel it doesn’t stop Thundercracker wincing. He knows how much it’ll hurt later.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter what happened,” Damus says, reluctantly. “I see you had the worst of it.”

An orange pincer reaches for a patch of bent plating. Starscream growls. Damus retracts his claw in a hurry.

[_Starscream_,] Thundercracker scolds. Starscream doesn’t even look at him, just glares at Damus. If looks could kill, Damus would be a blob of sizzling slag.

Damus backs off a further step, pincers raised. “You seem in need of medical help. I’m not much use on that front, but I can take you to a clinic. The setup is illegal, but the medics are real.”

“We’re going to the spacebridge,” Thundercracker says.

“With all due respect, do you think you’ll make it that far?”

There’s nothing in the silence that follows but the _plip_ of dripping energon. Thundercracker monitors his own dropping levels with a grimace. He’s lost more than can be accounted for by a slow leak. Something has cracked inside him—nothing fatal, but it isn’t stopping. His chronometer glitches when he tries to check their timing. He knows it’s close. Knows he has to choose. Do they limp for the spacebridge half-slagged and vulnerable to Decanter’s goons or take a chance on Damus’ illegal medics? More maddening is the nagging sense he _knows_ Damus from somewhere. The name doesn't ring a bell, and empurata or not his frame is unfamiliar, but still, it persists.

So does the energon leak.

“How far?” Starscream asks, unexpectedly.

“We’ll miss the bridge opening,” Thundercracker protests.

“A whole lot of good that does us if you’re dead. How _far_, Damus?”

“Not very, but it’s something of a maze.” Damus turns as if the question were agreement and walks a little way down the tunnel. He pauses and looks back. “Are you coming?”

Slowly, Thundercracker and Starscream limp after him.

It’s a myth that seekers are incapacitated in dark, close spaces—just another bit of functionist propaganda to throw on the trash heap. They may not like the weight of planetary crust above their heads or the lack of space to stretch their wings, but especially when injured, dark places can be refuges. Thundercracker is glad for that as they make their way through the twisting labyrinth of sublayers. Damus obviously has a unique definition of _not far_; they pass through conduits, dry sewers and the abandoned remnants of what were once homes and businesses before they were buried, layer under layer, eons ago.

His positioning system is totally hopeless. He can’t even picture where they are respective to the surface—not that he’s overly familiar with Primax’s layout to begin with. There’s the hotel, the spacebridge, the towers, and the old stockade they renamed Garrus-10 (which to him seems just to invite trouble, given what happened to the others) somewhere to the north. He thinks they might be approaching the industrial district, except that it’s no longer an industrial district. Primax has long since farmed out its dirty production work to _Alchemeon-which-used-to-be-Kaon_ and encrusted the defunct factories with upscale housing.

_Damus of Tarn_, not _Damus of Soluhex_. Is it only that he’s old enough to have been made before the functionists’ renaming, or is it a political choice? Thundercracker keeps an optic on the little empuratee leading them. The sense that he knows Damus only grows stronger. He scours his memory banks for the _something_ he's certain must be there, deep down. Damus turns his head in time to catch him staring.

“I’m Thundercracker, by the way,” Thundercracker covers.

Damus nods, all matter-of-fact, nothing like the way he’d reacted to Starscream. “I know.”

“Uh. You do?”

“I saw your movie,” Damus says. Just when Thundercracker begins to relax, he adds, “and we’ve met.”

“…We have?”

“Well… Not you, technically. The other you. This Cybertron’s you.” Damus taps his pincers together. “I suppose he’s dead now.”

Starscream’s low growl returns. Thundercracker tightens his grip on Starscream’s shoulder and feels the coiled-spring tension there. He wills Starscream not to attack Damus. The growl subsides. To his credit, Damus looks sheepish. He ducks his head.

“That was tactless,” Damus says. “I apologize. I must admit, I’ve never been the best with people. It was a very long time ago, near the point of divergence, I think—but do you remember me at all? We attended the Jhiaxian Academy of Advanced Technology. You were always hanging around with that purple seeker—”

“Oh!” Thundercracker snaps his fingers. With context the memory slots into place. Suddenly he knows _exactly_ who he’s talking to. “I remember! We were both part of Shockwave’s outlier project. _That’s_ why you were Glitch. You could… Short out machines? Do I have that right?”

“Broadly. And you had some kind of sonic weapon, I think.” He laughs. “We were all useless.”

Thundercracker tries to pull up any other relevant memories, but Damus is right: it was a very long time ago, and he and Damus had barely been acquaintances. Most of his time at the academy is compressed into deep storage, all things he’s neither needed nor wanted to access for thousands of vorns. He pieces together the few free-floating bits that crop up. “You disappeared halfway through the semester. I never saw you again.”

“I got caught painting anti-functionist slogans on the academy buildings.” Damus’ optic contracts into the line Thundercracker has learned to read as an empuratee wince. “It was a particularly bad political moment. The new council decided to make an example of me.”

Thundercracker winces in turn. “Sorry. That’s terrible.”

“In some ways I was lucky. In the vorns that followed, the council took so many faces I hardly even stand out. At least I’m not a flathead.”

Privately, Thundercracker agrees with him. Empurata is one thing—it’s a straightforward mutilation—but the idea of turning a living mech into a mute propaganda billboard sets his plating crawling. What had happened to Old Cybertron’s Damus? Had he met the same unlucky fate at the council’s hands? Had he died in the revolution’s first violent throes, or before, or after, or had he jumped ship to a neutral colony and lived a long, uneventful life? By the end of the war there had been so few of them that Thundercracker had known everyone by name, if not by face, and he hasn’t seen little Damus since the golden age. It doesn’t bode well.

“You were a member of Decepticon high command, weren’t you?” Damus asks, unexpectedly.

“How do you even know what a Decepticon is?”

“I saw your movie. And I fought with Megatron’s resistance against the functionists. I first heard him speak in a tunnel under Nova Point; I’d never experienced anything like it. It’d been so long since anyone had been brave enough to speak against the council, and there he was, saying _rise_ as if it was the most natural thing to do.” Damus shakes his head in slow awe. Thundercracker can’t blame him for it. He remembers Megatron’s sheer force of personality; how he could pour fervor into his listeners’ sparks with nothing but his voice. Battle prowess aside, Megatron’s power was always foremost in his palladium-plated charisma.

“He always did have a way with words,” Thundercracker says.

“Sometimes, on the _Last Light—_not often, but sometimes—he mentioned things about his own Cybertron. The ways things happened there. They seemed so unreal, like mythology; like tales of the thirteen. It isn’t right, what they did to him. Not after all that he did for us.” Damus looks at Starscream. Some of that awe lingers. “I’m aware things are exaggerated for the sake of drama and the screen, but—is it true that Starscream executed the old senate single-handed?”

Starscream’s optic contracts to a pinprick. He whips to stare at Thundercracker. “Did I _what?_”

“It’s true,” Thundercracker confirms. “You did. I mean—_he_ did.” He drops to a mutter. “Parallel universes are so confusing.”

“You’re lying,” Starscream says. “That’s impossible.”

“You were Megatron’s second in command and air commander of the Decepticon armada. Not only did you execute the senate, you hunted down the functionist council and assassinated them in their berths.” He pauses to enjoy Starscream’s stunned disbelief. It’s rare that he can be struck silent. “I told you we had a war, Starscream. That was just the beginning.”

Thundercracker’s chronometer continues not to read right, but he’s aware enough of time passing to feel the pang when the spacebridge opens without them. They’re nowhere near it. He knows now they never would have made it, but it doesn’t stop him regretting that he isn’t there, walking through. He tells himself it’s probably crawling with enforcers anyway, but it’s no comfort. The spacebridge is the second place any halfway competent enforcer would’ve looked for him after the hotel. He never should’ve gone back there. Peacetime’s made him soft and stupid. He blames it on the reactivated trine bond, on long-pruned priority trees setting up their strangling grip on his spark. It’s like he spotted Starscream and his entire processor fell out.

The sublayers’ eerie abandonment changes so gradually he barely notices: weak and straggling running lights appear on the walls along with outcroppings of the parasitic crystal growths Dead-Enders had used to keep in jars for their thin phosphorescent glow. The air tastes both fresher and staler—less dusty, but more of exhaust. They pass beneath another Decepticon sigil painted on a wall. It’s the _weirdest_ relief when he spots a crumpled packet of rust sticks in the gutter, just for the confirmation that other mechs exist.

Damus pauses before a massive metal blast door set into the tunnel’s side. The remnants of yellow warning paint fleck its flank, whatever it once warned against consumed by decay and age. It looks too decrepit to move, but Damus spends a few seconds messing with an ancient keypad (mechanical! It has actual individual keys!), and there’s the heavy, grinding sound of a tumbler turning. The door swings open just wide enough to admit them. Behind it is darkness. Damus steps through without hesitation. The glow of his optic does not one single thing to illuminate the room beyond.

Damus mutters imprecations about the sublevel’s builders all being conjunxed to scraplets. “My apologies. The lights are out again. We’ve been having trouble with the power flow—I’m not sure if they’re trying to starve us out up top or if they just don’t care about maintenance. Try not to trip over anything.”

Thundercracker looks at Starscream. Starscream looks back. They don’t need a trine bond to share the thought that this is sketchy as all slag.

[I don’t like this place,] Starscream sends.

[We came this far. What’ll he do, murder us? He barely comes up to your fan intakes. Back at the academy he was afraid of his own shadow.]

[I have a bad feeling. I know that’s stupid, but…]

[It isn’t stupid.] Thundercracker grimaces. [I don’t think we have much choice.]

Starscream’s grip on Thundercracker’s waist tightens. [Promise me you won’t let your guard down.]

[I promise. The first whiff of sketchy business, I’ll take him out.]

[_We’ll_ take him out,] Starscream sends. [I’ll rip out that optic and beat him to death with it.]

Reluctantly, together, they follow Damus into the dark.

The moment they step through the blast door Thundercracker can tell the room is _massive_. Their footsteps echo away into empty space. Damus shuts the door behind them and it’s like being entombed. Cavernous darkness stretches out and out in all directions. Air currents play over his wings, cool and dry. Even damaged, they whisper to him of vast space and a ceiling so vaulted as to be nearly beyond reach. This place must have been a hangar or warehouse before New Cybertron’s constant expansion engulfed it. In his biolights’ glow, the floor is bare metal stained black with age. He cranks them up to maximum. Still he sees only the suggestion of shapes in the gloom: benches, a jumble of crates, a distant and irregular mass against one wall, all bulging angles. It’s likely machinery left over from the place’s first abandonment, all of it too much trouble to move.

Damus sets a brisk pace across the emptiness. “Nearly there,” he says, before Thundercracker can ask. “I don’t normally bring people in this way. It’s something of a back entrance. I can’t promise anything extravagant, but after the medics have seen to your wounds, there will be fuel and a place for you to rest. We can promise you that much.”

“_We?_” Starscream asks.

“Did I not mention?” Damus spins on his heel as he reaches the opposite wall, his optic piercingly blue in the dark, and opens a much smaller door with a flourish. Light spills through. Dim, objectively, but blinding after the tunnels. Thundercracker shields his optics.

When they focus, the shapes moving in the light are people. Everywhere, _people_: motorbikes, crawlers, haulers and harvesters, all of them dingy, most damaged, many spotted with rust. Some glance up at their approach but most don’t, busy with their own tasks—except those who watch Thundercracker’s wings with curiosity or fascination. Thundercracker draws Starscream closer by instinct. _These_ are the underlayers Thundercracker remembers: chaotic, crowded, loud and reeking. The remnants of whatever this place once was have been transformed into stores and crowded apartments, workshops and bars. There’s music. He smells the greasy residue of energon being rendered into high grade and the polluted tang in the air that’s been scrubbed from the city above.

“Welcome,” Damus says, “to the Sanctuary of Lower Iacon.”

The Sanctuary is a tangled shantytown of people all living on top of one another. It’s loud, cold, faintly damp, and smells of used oil and exhaust. Rust streaks the walls. Glitchmice skitter through the alley trash. It’s so familiar it seems almost like home. Damus plunges into the crowd and leads them with the same officious stride he’d taken through the tunnels. Mechs get out of his way even though he’s tiny. Thundercracker wonders if Damus turns into a bulldozer. He’s certainly the right color for it.

Starscream presses closer to Thundercracker’s side as they wind through the crowd, optic skipping from point to point without rhyme or reason. Thundercracker recognizes an overactive threat assessment module when he sees one. He sends a pulse of reassurance through the bond and flattens his hand to Starscream’s back. Starscream returns annoyance, but doesn’t pull away.

Oblivious to their drifting attention, Damus says, “At first it was only the fringes taking refuge from the functionists, but the population grew. To be honest, it wasn’t always the, er, highest calibre of mech making their homes here, but we’ve done our best to make Lower Iacon a liveable community. The name was a bit of an in-joke, but when they renamed the upper city—”

“Do you _ever_ stop talking?” Starscream snaps.

[Be nice,] Thundercracker sends. [He might be a little strange—]

[And annoying.]

[But the last thing we need is him turning on us! He’s the only ally we have.]

“I don’t care about history,” Starscream adds, to a wounded-looking Damus. “I care about Thundercracker _not dying_. You promised medics. Where are they?”

Damus’ optic resets. “I, ah—yes, I suppose that is more urgent than—forgive me, I was caught up in the moment. Follow me, the clinic is just past the next junction.”

Thundercracker smells the clinic before he sees it. It’s hard to miss: the reek of sickness, decay, spilled fluids and harsh cleanser. It smells like the war in all the worst ways. The clinic takes up a blocky hollow of no clear purpose, all beds, equipment, and flimsy plastic dividers. There’s a makeshift quality to its construction, though it has every evidence of permanence. The lighting is dim and miserable, the floor stained with traces of unnameable gunk and crowded with new patients waiting their turns. He wrinkles his nose. If not for the promise of professionals and the flash of red and white plating deeper in, he’d take his chances with a patch kit and a handheld welder.

On that note, Thundercracker takes stock of his own state. His limp’s worsened during the journey, every step clumsy and wobbling. His wing dangles half-loose, parts of his protoform exposed beneath twisted paneling. Energon seeps down his leg in steady rivulets. His fuel gauge has somehow dropped to twenty percent. When he looks back he finds he’s been leaving a meandering trail of pink behind him. He isn’t sure when he started bleeding that much; he isn’t sure of a lot of things, suddenly, and can’t think why. Turning off his pain sensors was probably a mistake, but it’s too late now. He leans on Starscream more and more heavily. The edges of his vision blur grey.

The medic who spots them is broad and square, chassis the traditional red and white of the medical caste, brow crowned in a bright chevron. Thundercracker squints in vague recognition. His memory banks keep tossing up errors when he tries to access them, everything floaty and undefined. The medic hurries over, looks him up and down, and asks, “What in the name of Primus’ misaligned gearshaft did you _do_ to yourself?”

“Hello, Ratchet,” Thundercracker says, and slides sideways as things get… Fuzzy.

Thundercracker is aware, as if from a great distance, of Starscream’s shrill voice: of shouting, of some kind of commotion. It’s hard to think. Someone says, _Hold him_, panicked, as tools hit the floor and light flashes on claws, and someone says, _You can’t have him, get away, you can’t cut him apart_—and that sounds like Starscream too, raw and rough.

But it can’t be Starscream, because Starscream is dead.

His fuel gauge ticks down, down. His processor shuts parts of itself down with it. The world becomes overwhelming and his systems snip off sensory streams to compensate. There are hands on him; there is energon on his cracked-open chassis; there is darkness.

“How do you get yourself into these predicaments?” Starscream asks.

It’s a dream. Thundercracker knows it’s a dream because they’re on the bridge of the _Instant Consequences_, a destroyer-class ship which had itself been destroyed early in the war, some thirty or forty thousand vorns past. Starscream is resplendent in a sleek white frame accented crimson at chest, hip, wings and turbines, his fingertips blue and filed to deceptively delicate claw-points. He frowns at himself in the reflection of stars. When he turns to Thundercracker it’s a shock to see a face within that helm, ruby-opticked as ever. Mass-produced he might be, but Starscream has always been pretty. His sculptors knew what they were aiming for.

Thundercracker shakes his head. It’s like thinking through sludge. “Predicaments?”

“Scrapes. _Situations._ Whatever you want to call them. You have a knack for wandering into messes.”

“You’re the one who drags me into them.”

“Technically true, I suppose.” Starscream rubs one sharp talon against the side of his thumb. “You always were a soft touch.”

Thundercracker doesn’t understand. He feels stupid and slow, his processor full of fog. He’s dreamed of Starscream before, bits of memory sewn into new narratives. It rarely makes much sense upon waking. When he looks out the window to gather his thoughts the starfield outside is unnaturally bright. He squints. It takes a long klik to figure out why: there are too many stars. Earth’s familiar constellations mesh with an unfamiliar stretch of space he recognizes (after more thinking) as New Cybertron’s sky. Stellar bodies hang superimposed, a double exposure, everything shifted and scrambled out of position. He opens his mouth to point this out to Starscream.

He recoils. Starscream’s chest is an open wound. A black hole pulses in place of his spark. His hands have become sharp, his wings long and low, his face a light floating in the abyssal dark that fills his helm.

“Starscream, what—what happened?”

“Happened?”

Starscream’s voice comes distorted from no place in particular, static-crackling like an interference pattern. Wrongness washes over Thundercracker as if he’s seeing something he isn’t supposed to, the underpinnings of the universe turned inside out and laid bare. He backs up an involuntary step.

“This isn’t right,” Thundercracker says. “None of this is right.”

“None of this is right,” Starscream echoes, the shade of a husk.

He drifts closer, unconcerned with the state of his unnatural spark. The bridge of the _Instant Consequences_ warps around him, new and destroyed and in-between and not a ship at all, atmosphere and radiation seeping through its seams. Starscream is so close Thundercracker feels the cold radiating off him; the hungry emptiness at his core that could never be filled, perhaps not even when he was alive. Two flickering ghosts trail tethered behind him, two seekers grey and vague with information creep, their spark chambers hollow and dark. Part of Thundercracker thinks he ought to flee, but he’s never been afraid of Starscream. Not even at his worst. He stands his ground. Starscream’s hands rise to cup his face, cold as the void. He fights not to flinch. Starscream’s optic bores into him and no matter how long he looks he can’t tell how far away it is. He feels he might fall into it.

Starscream’s grip tightens painfully. “It has been observed that seekers naturally assume a tripartite social structure, but why is this so?”

It isn’t Starscream’s voice. Starscream doesn’t even look that much like _Starscream_ anymore, wings strangely limp and brushing the ground, his body bleached of color. The seekers tethered to him are—something else, something vague and hard to look at, all wrong angles. Thundercracker pulls free and the thing that isn’t Starscream stays frozen, hands raised, then turns to stare at him.

“What the _frag_,” Thundercracker says. His plating crawls. He backs up until he hits the window. Starlight paints the shadows dark. “Who—_what_ are you?”

“I posit that, as inferior manifestations of Primus’ grace, their sparks are weak and corrupt. These fragmented sparks seek balance with other fragments, forming the degenerate social construct known as the _trine_.” The thing sweeps an arm as if addressing an invisible audience. It’s tall, spindly, and civilian-looking; it has no face, but Thundercracker hesitates to think of it as empurata. There’s something _off_ about it, something purposeful. _Deliberate_. “Observe the specimen in question. Lacking structure it reverts to its true nature: erratic, violent, thoughtless.”

The thing grabs for Thundercracker, frost glittering on its needle-tipped fingers. Thundercracker punches it right in its big yellow optic.

The ship loses containment with a force that rips the bridge apart. Thundercracker goes spinning into hard vacuum. The stars fill the sky in disorienting clusters, everything shining. Here, too, he knows he’s dreaming: no ice forms on his plating, no warnings prompt him to transform. In the time he takes to recover from his tumble the stars wink out one by one. Then he’s alone in the dark, not even the shards of the imaginary ship for company.

It takes him a moment to realize he can still see. It isn’t his biolights—brilliant sparklight leaks through his seams, so bright that he worries _he’s_ about to lose containment too. He opens his cockpit to see what’s wrong. Within is the familiar shape of his spark spinning in its housing. Not so familiar are the twin stars that circle it in slow orbit. One is bright and healthy. The other wobbles on its circuit, two shapes overlapping: a point of light, a sucking void. He stares into his own chest, unable to understand what he’s seeing.

He feels himself panic.

“Keep him still,” someone says, faint and crackling. “I can’t—sedative—not enough—”

“Fragging warframes,” says someone else, and—

—Hands on him, bright lights, damage reports coming in garbled as someone digs around in his chassis and he wrestles himself halfway off the table as combat protocols scramble him into readiness even as his systems misfire and half the world’s a haze of error messages and he’s splayed open, inner workings on display as a yellow-opticked face looms over him and for a moment it’s the thing from his dream and he lashes out, fingers clamped on neck cables, squeezing—

“That’s enough of that,” Ratchet says. He pumps a double dose of paralytic into Thundercracker’s bared femoral line. Thundercracker lets go of the nurse to grab for him instead. He never gets there.

Blankness swallows him whole.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you a little late, as I (just like Lower Iacon) have had patchy electricity for the past couple of days.

A dingy ceiling swims into view some uncountable time later. Thundercracker stares at it, exhausted and shaking off the dregs of a nightmare that feels as if it belongs to someone else: all disconnected fragments, black space, a yellow light. He’s lying on the unmistakable hardness of a medical slab. Try as he might, he can’t remember how he got there. He must’ve been damaged in battle. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.

The more he thinks about it the wronger it seems. This doesn’t feel like the _Instant Consequence’s _medbay or even the _Nemesis’_. When he calls up his diagnostics they respond sluggishly. According to the readouts he has twenty-seven percent fuel and rising, minor internal structural damage, and several fresh welds undergoing self-repair. It hurts less than it should. When he pokes at that he finds that someone with medical codes has overridden his whole sensor net. Either he was hurt _really_ bad or Hook was feeling uncharacteristically generous. Only the _Nemesis_ was hauled off for scrap ages ago, the war is over, and Hook hasn’t been his medic for a while.

Where _is_ he? He gathers a mostly numb arm beneath himself and starts to rise.

“Stop squirming.” A hand pushes him down. Ratchet’s scowling face appears overhead. It blocks some of the light. “I didn’t weld you back together so you could pop a gasket.”

Oh. _New Cybertron._ Everything comes flooding back. Thundercracker never thought he’d miss waking up in a war zone. “Why can’t I move?”

“Because you half fragged yourself jumping off a building and not catching yourself on the way down. Also you kept coming up swinging during surgery, and I’m already down a nurse. Your chassis is ridiculous, by the way. No one needs so much heavy armament.” Ratchet jacks into Thundercracker’s systems without asking and Thundercracker senses the cold crawl of a medical diagnostic running. “Plus, that conjunx of yours threw a fit and I couldn’t deal with you both at the same time.”

“Not m’ conjunx. Trine,” Thundercracker mumbles. “What are you talking about? This is lightweight compared to the war. I have two blasters and a missile bay and not even a single—_oh_.” He squints. “You’re not Ratchet. Or you are, but you aren’t.”

“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt considering you’re coming off pain blockers and pretend that made sense.”

“You’re new Ratchet!”

“Ha! Not even nearly.”

Maybe he _is _still a little loopy. Thundercracker lies there and listens to Ratchet grumble to himself as he runs his checks. Hadn’t Ratchet had some little clinic in Rodion’s Dead End before the war? Where had he heard that? From Deadlock? (No, Deadlock’s calling himself Drift now. _Drift_, who he thinks might be conjunxed to original-flavor Ratchet now that the _Lost Light_ has completed its final journey. He wonders if they’re both on-planet. The world might crumple into a singularity of pure stubbornness should two Ratchets ever meet face to face)

The universe is a very strange place.

Ratchet finishes his diagnostics and withdraws from Thundercracker’s systems. He disconnects the tube feeding energon into Thundercracker’s lines. Thundercracker’s levels stall out at thirty-one percent. Not great, but not dire.

“That’s as much medical grade as I can spare,” Ratchet says. “Your tanks, like your chassis, are ridiculous. You’re lucky I’m as old as I am. They don’t train the new medics on flightframes anymore. Especially not on warframes.”

“What’s the damage?”

“Two cracked struts, a wing hanging by wires, and the enforcers’ virus eating away at your self-repair. That’s what nearly got you.”

“A virus?”

“I purged it from your systems. I’ve seen it before.” Ratchet frowns more deeply. “Damus seems to think you’re on the level, but you’d better not cause trouble. Lower Iacon has enough problems without inviting a raid.”

“No trouble from me. I just want to get home.” Thundercracker sits up slowly. His frame aches as the pain blockers recede. A virus, _ugh._ It must have gone in with the cortical bullets. He wonders if that’s standard practice; either you surrender to the enforcers, or you run and bleed out somewhere along the way. “How’s my wing?”

“At the moment? More weld than plating. The repairs need time to solidify. Give it a few cycles and it’ll hold you in the air, but it won’t be graceful and it won’t be pretty. If you want it to stand up to any punishment you'll need it forged new, and I don’t have the resources or equipment to retrofit a warframe. You’ll need a real hospital.” He makes a shooing gesture. “Now get out of my clinic and recuperate somewhere else. Go on, I have a line waiting for your berth.”

When Thundercracker staggers up and goes looking for Starscream, he can’t find him. He wanders around the clinic’s waiting area, feeling clumsy and overlarge. The other patients look at him askance. He can’t exactly blame them. If he were a laser pointer he wouldn’t want to be stepped on, either. Eventually a nurse (pale green, kind of pointy? Thundercracker doesn’t recognize her at all) catches sight of him lurking and comes over.

“Do you need something?”

“I’m looking for… The mech I came in with, have you seen…?” It could be the lingering aftereffects of the pain blockers or the tail end of the foreign code still gunking up his systems but Thundercracker feels half-clocked, processor muddling through thick oil. He shakes his head to clear it. “He’s about so tall, angry all the time, one red optic?”

The nurse grimaces. “Oh, _him_. He had kind of an episode when you went down. He tried to fight Ratchet.”

Thundercracker knows Ratchet’s battlefield reputation. Forged medics might as well be tanks. “Is he okay?”

“It didn’t exactly go well. We put him in forced shutdown.”

“You _what?_”

“Calm down. He’s fine.” The nurse is unruffled by the warning throb of Thundercracker’s engines. “Flatline took him to sleep it off. He’ll come out of medical stasis in half a cycle or so, no harm done. Damus assigned you two temporary quarters by the ossuary—go straight down that way until you pass the lube shop, hang a left, then turn right at sparksetter’s junction and—”

The instructions are dizzying and borderline nonsensical. Thundercracker memorizes them as best he can. He assembles a tentative map based on the data. When he blinks it away to say _Thanks_, or maybe, _Could you repeat that,_ she’s already ducked back into the clinic. He’s alone.

Thundercracker shakes his head again. The pain blockers aren’t doing him any favors, and he brings the map back up and sets a marker to follow. It leads him deeper into the warren of Lower Iacon. The details are a blur. All he cares is that people get out of his way, and whether it’s his guns or his scowl, they do it in a hurry. He feels a little better. Better still now that—as he’s repaired enough not to be leaking all over the floor—he sees most of Lower Iacon’s citizens are the same fragile civilians that make up most of New Cybertron’s population. The only weapons he spots are on what pass for Lower Iacon’s unofficial enforcers. Even those are aftermarket mods. If this place turns on him, he can fight his way out.

Except that, a joor on, all he’s gotten is lost.

It could be the depth; it could be some inherent effect of the sublayer. His positioning system has real trouble mapping this place. Moving in three dimensions should be second nature, but everything is hatches, tunnels, and passages. It’s like untangling a bale of wire from the inside. Every time he sucks up his pride and asks for directions he gets nonsense worse than the nurse’s. There’s no nice clean, _Yes, straight ahead until the third branch, two levels up, can’t miss it._ It’s all bizarre slag like, _Take the blue line to Solus’ fist, climb through the dusk hatch, and turn right at Whitewheel’s, but if you reach the cold pits you’ve gone too far_, _so backtrack to the holovid shop and—_

When he tries to make them explain he only gets blank stares. Belatedly he remembers Old Cybertron’s sublayers were like this, too. Security through obscurity: the enforcers can’t stop what they can’t find.

It’s almost a relief to duck through a door and find himself in that same vast, dark chamber Damus had led them through. The room is as deserted as the first time, and as silent. His biolights barely penetrate the space. He peers upward into the gloom. His wings tell him there’s a ceiling (high, high above) even if he can’t see it. He wonders just how far under the surface they are and what lies upon it. How much of Primax walks overhead, oblivious to this shard of Iacon living still beneath their feet?

“Thundercracker, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

Thundercracker startles—but when he turns it’s only Damus, his blue optic tipped to one side. Thundercracker tamps down on his overactive combat subroutines before they can mark Damus as hostile. He’s too on-edge to be trusted with live weaponry. For all that’s happened since, it’s too easy to fall back on wartime survival rules: shoot first, ask questions never. If he doesn’t get some rest he'll end up hurting someone.

“I got kicked out of the medbay,” Thundercracker says.

“The clinic?”

“Whatever.” He looks back into the dark, at the nebulous shapes in it that could be anything. “There weren’t enough berths. Then I went looking for Starscream. Then I got lost.”

“Ah, yes. I suppose the Sanctuary is a bit idiosyncratic, isn’t it? Didn’t anyone say you were assigned quarters? I can take you there if you like, or send you the route.” Damus’ helm tips further. “If you don’t mind my asking, what are your levels like? You seem a little undercharged.”

“Like I said, I got lost.” Thundercracker hesitates over telling Damus how much fuel he has—old instincts die hard—but what can he possibly do with the information? “They’re not great.”

“Well, Swerve runs a hole in the wall on the third level if you have the shanix to spare.” Damus sends him the coordinates. Thundercracker accepts the transfer. A much more accurate route spools its path into a deeper part of Lower Iacon, one he hasn’t yet visited. “Or the refectory is free, but it’s low grade pulled straight from the refinery. Apparently it tastes terrible, but that isn’t a problem for some of us.”

“Swerve? Little red-and-white minibot about so high? Turns into a truck? Biggest mouth you ever saw?”

“I don’t know about mouths.” Damus taps the hard angle under his optic where a mouth isn’t. “He’s like me. The rest is fairly accurate, yes.”

Refuelling can wait. He needs to find Starscream. Thundercracker turns to follow his new map and the world swims around him; he catches himself on the wall and shuts off his optics until the room stops spinning. An ache gathers behind his temple. He’s always hated coming out of surgery.

Damus hurries up beside him. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. Just give me a klik.”

“Of course you are,” Damus says, doubtfully. “You know you’re welcome to stay as long as is necessary, the both of you. The Sanctuary of Lower Iacon is always open to those who need it—but, energon first, and then you can rest. We’ll go to Swerve’s before you drop into stasis. Come on, the first cube is on me.”

Damus trots along at Thundercracker’s elbow on the way to Swerve’s, all solicitous attention, as if he could catch Thundercracker if he fell. Thundercracker doesn’t have the heart to tell Damus he’d probably squash him flat. He’s heavier than he looks, and he looks plenty heavy. With Damus at his side the civilians still get out of his way, but they don’t look so alarmed about it. Instead they look to Damus and relax. That’s… Interesting. _Damus assigned you two temporary quarters,_ the nurse had said. Does Damus have some power in Lower Iacon? Is he in charge? What does that make him, the—what’s the Earth word for being in charge of a place? _Mayor? _Mayor Damus. Does he have a sash and top hat, and if so, how does he put them on with claws?

Thundercracker may still be feeling the aftereffects of the pain blockers.

“I heard Starscream had a bit of an incident,” Damus says.

“Uh. Something like that,” Thundercracker admits. “Apparently he got a little defensive when Ratchet opened me up.”

“Understandable, I suppose. His loyalty to his conjunx is to be commended, except that it left poor Triage with two split lines and several gouges in his front. Still, no real harm done. Live and learn.” Damus hesitates, claw-tips tapping together. “May I ask… Where did you _find_ him? You both came to us so damaged. What happened?”

“Why does everyone think—we’re not _conjunxed_, it’s a trine bond.” At Damus’ look of polite incomprehension, Thundercracker adds, “You know, a flight formation? Wingmates? Three of us? Is none of this ringing a bell?”

“I can’t say I have much experience with flightframe social mores, no.”

New Cybertron’s whole awful history hits Thundercracker all over again. Of course Damus knows nothing about flightframes. They’ve been pretty much extinct here for Primus only knows how long, ever since the scraplet-fragging functionists decided they weren’t needed for the _grand design_. Whatever the pit they thought that meant.

Thundercracker laughs a little. He suddenly needs to say it out loud, to make someone else understand how royally fragged up this all is. “I found him in the towers.”

“You—the _towers?_”

“Yeah. I was at this fancy party, and it was boring, and I was halfway to bailing out when the mech running the thing drags me in to watch this _pit fight_ like I’ll love it just because I’m a warframe, and it’s all drones and monsters until the last round when they dragged him out like a mechanimal. It wasn’t just the empurata. You had to have seen him. He was in such bad shape _I_ almost thought he was a drone—all feral and filthy and paint-stripped—but in my spark, I felt_…_” He becomes aware he’s pressing a hand to his cockpit, to the ache of the bond that still isn’t quite right. He grimaces. Suddenly even Damus’ blue optic is too bright to bear. “You know what that rich fragger said when I noticed? He said, _Of course it’s a drone, cold constructs aren’t people_.”

“That’s awful,” Damus says, softly.

“Of course it’s awful! This whole planet is awful. Mine was, too. Sometimes I think there’s not a single Cybertron in any universe that doesn’t turn into a million-way clusterfrag. The place is cursed. I don’t know why anyone lives here.”

“I find the liveability of a place has much more to do with the people within it than its confines. Primax is a fast, loud, clean, _cruel_ place with no time for the weak or downtrodden. Lower Iacon, on the other hand… The Sanctuary may be small and rusted, but we help one another. Even the worst things can be redeemed with time and love; Megatron said that, once. Well—he didn’t put it _quite_ that way, but the sentiment was there.”

Thundercracker doubts Megatron ever preached love and redemption, no matter what he’s heard about his supposed reformation. “Sometimes it’s rust all the way down.”

“But not always.” Damus gestures around them at the tight-packed confines of Lower Iacon. “This whole place—the room we passed through on our way in, especially. Do you know what it used to be?”

“What, the hangar?”

“Not a hangar,” Damus says. “The charnel pit of a smelting complex.”

Thundercracker snaps to stare at his feet as if all of Lower Iacon will split beneath him to expose the bubbling, red-hot crucibles far below. Nothing happens except that Damus laughs. Like his voice, it’s more melodic than Thundercracker would have expected of an empuratee.

“I’m sorry, just—the _look_ on your face!” Damus’ optic crinkles with amusement. “It’s all long defunct. Even if it were fully powered it hasn’t been operational since the Golden Age. I doubt any of it works. After it was abandoned, the complex was big enough to set up a thriving little community. Life from death; very poetic.”

“_From a shattered spark a crystal yet blooms_,” Thundercracker mutters.

“_Thirteenfold_ _pointed in Mortilus’ fields._” Damus perks up. “_Horizon-blue on the broken teeth of tombs. It does not end which cannot yield—_I didn’t know you had an interest in poetry, Thundercracker.”

He doesn’t, really. It’s just that Old Cybertron produces very little literary work, there being only a few hundred of them left. “It’s fine, I guess.”

“I prefer Megatron’s pre-war poetry, myself. His more recent work tends to be somewhat difficult to parse… More personal, I think, but more obscure for it. When you filmed the war academy scenes in _Starscream: The Movie_, were you referencing—”

Damus talks his audials off all the way to Swerve’s. To his own surprise, Thundercracker finds himself enjoying discussing his work; why he chose this angle over that, the things that were true and the things that were true enough. He hardly notices when they arrive.

Swerve’s is, true to Damus’ word, a hole in the wall. Literally. The minibot behind the counter is happy to chatter at them the whole time he’s pulling cubes of midgrade (seasoned with copper shavings for Thundercracker, plain for Damus, and extra mercury for Starscream, even if Thundercracker doesn’t know if he’ll be able to taste it) about how the bar’s set up in the ripped-out housing of a furnace that broke down a few thousand vorns back. Unusually for an empuratee, Swerve still has his hands. He uses them to great effect in mixing drinks. Thundercracker learns more than he ever wanted to know about Lower Iacon and the gossip of all the people in it. He finds himself relaxing, despite everything. It’s all so… _Normal._ This dim, grungy bar is a million times more familiar than any penthouse will ever be.

When they’re done, Thundercracker accepts Damus’ offer to help carry fuel back for Starscream. Starscream needs all the help he can get—but also Swerve’s optic had gone so wide and thankful when Thundercracker had thoughtlessly slapped a handful of shanix on the bar as a tip that he’d bought more cubes than he strictly needs. He feels better walking with an arm free; Damus just seems happy to be helpful. He leads Thundercracker through all those bizarre and twisting corridors, down a dimly lit hallway speckled in rust and populated by not a single soul. 

It gets quieter the closer they get to his assigned room. It should be a relief. Instead, as the crowd thins, unease creeps in. Maybe it’s the echo of the misaligned trine bond; Thundercracker would put it down to the knowledge of how deep they are under the surface (all that weight waiting to crash upon his head, or just the simple creepiness of isolation) but, over the long course of the war, he’s learned to pay attention to those little feelings. Sometimes they’re nothing, but sometimes they’re the subliminal synthesis of details too far below the surface to consciously register. A slight chemical signature, a quality of light; whatever it is, he doesn’t like it. He finds himself keeping half an optic on Damus—which seems absurd, he’s half Thundercracker’s size—but still, nothing changes as he approaches the marker terminus blinking in his HUD.

It stabilizes on a battered metal door like all the others, its paint ancient and flaking, the design something straight out of a utilitarian pre-Golden Age holovid. Maybe it used to be part of the complex’s offices. It’s so old the lock can’t authenticate automatically. Instead there’s a touchpad by the door, which seems like a terribly poor choice to assign to an empuratee.

“My apologies,” Damus says, when he sees where Thundercracker’s looking. “It isn’t ideal, but most of Lower Iacon isn’t sized for such, well, _large_ frames. Megatron had similar difficulties when he was here—he once got wedged into a doorway in the minibot quarter. I wouldn’t want to stuff you into a box.”

“It’s fine,” Thundercracker says. “We’ll deal with it.”

It’s pretty standard stuff for the age of this sublevel. Back when empurata was first instituted the world was full of these kinds of locks. It was part of the point—shutting the maimed out of public life. Un-personing. Its effectiveness had only gone so far; the more un-people you have, the more like people they seem. He presses his hand to the dusty reader and after half a klik it shudders to life, flashes green, and unlocks. The door opens.

The hall is only dimly lit but the room’s pitch-black. The rectangle of light that falls through the doorway illuminates a low countertop, a handful of chairs, and the vague shape of another doorway further in. It’s bigger than Thundercracker had expected, though the air tastes stale and deoxidized, as if it hasn’t been properly circulated in a decivorn. A table reveals itself nearby and he sets his energon cubes upon it. Their magenta glow spills gently through the space.

“Starscream?” Thundercracker asks. “Are you in here?”

The room brightens as it senses occupants, but what should be an instant-on is a slow, struggling rise. When it’s bright enough to move without slamming his shins into anything, he explores the room. _Rooms_, he realizes, as he finds a berthroom, a common space, a food prep area with its own (long disconnected) energon dispenser, and even a small washrack. He’d expected to be warehoused in a closet somewhere. This is far more luxury than he’d thought existed in Lower Iacon.

But no matter where he looks, no Starscream.

[Starscream?] Thundercracker tries. He should have commed in the first place. [Where are you? Are you receiving this?]

No response, naturally. That would be too easy.

Damus cranes his neck into the empty berthroom. “Oh dear. I was certain I told Flatline to use this room. Perhaps he misheard?”

Worry wells up in Thundercracker. All that keeps him from charging back to the clinic and demanding to know what they’ve done with his trinemate is the presence of the bond and the way the thin layer of dust is disturbed on one of the berths. He bends to inspect it, then the floor. As the overhead lights brighten he makes out footprints. Starscream has been here, he’s sure… But where is he now?

“No,” Thundercracker says. “He was definitely here.”

There are four sets of footprints on the floor. His own, Damus’, an unfamiliar set which must be Flatline’s… And one wobbly pair of seeker heels leading from the berth to the door. Thundercracker groans at the sight of the scratches where Starscream has manually triggered its release mechanism. The lock can’t keep anyone trapped _in_ the room, of course. Flatline’s biggest mistake was thinking that, even in medical stasis, Starscream would do anything he was told. Now Thundercracker has to find a disoriented, confused, probably hostile Starscream wandering these creepy sublevels.

_Great_. He just hopes Starscream hasn’t already attacked anybody.

“Where would he go?” Damus’ optic widens in alarm. “I haven’t heard anything about him being spotted in Lower Iacon, and he’s in no condition to venture into the catacombs. They’re dangerous! The functionists deployed all sorts of nasty creatures to root out dissidents, and that’s not even mentioning the scraplets or the acid barnacles. He could be killed!”

Thundercracker doubts any version of Starscream would go down that easily, but keeps it to himself. He drags a hand down his face, feeling about ten times older than he is. He’s been shot and crashlanded and repaired all in one cycle. He’s _way_ too tired for this. All he wants to do is recharge.

“I can find him,” Thundercracker says.

“What? How?”

“Trine bond.” He taps his cockpit. Time to drag his wayward trinemate back from whatever he’s gotten himself into. Then he’ll tie Starscream to the berth to make him _rest_, if that’s what it takes. “Hang on a klik.”

The bond is a tenuous, patchwork thing. It still doesn’t feel right, but it exists, and that’s enough. He cycles his vents, shuts his eyes, and opens the bond as far as he’s able. He feels himself (solid and steady, the apex of the triangle), and Skywarp (barely a whisper with distance, all the way across the galaxy on Earth; no thoughts or feelings survive the trip, his presence a pinpoint, faint as a star), and finally, there’s—

His spark lurches. So does the rest of him. Thundercracker catches himself on the table. When his head stops ringing he finds himself on his knees, chest aching. Something is wrong. Deep down something is _wrong _and he staggers up and into the hallway, Starscream’s spark streaming jagged shards at him all the while, a wordless howl like the void itself cracked open—

“What is it?” Damus hurries to his side. “Are you all right? Thundercracker, what’s happened?”

“Something’s wrong with Starscream!”

“Is he sick? Damaged? Should I comm for a medic? I’m sure Ratchet can spare someone to—”

“I don’t _know!_” The bond tugs at him like a hook lodged in his spark casing. It pulls him further down the corridor, deep into the empty portions of his map. He doesn’t stop to think, just breaks into a run. The farther he goes the worse he feels. It’s only encouraging insofar as it means he’s getting closer. His navigation software tracks his winding path as he cuts through turnings and branches and the lights of Lower Iacon fall away.

“Are you certain he came this way?” Damus’ little legs pump to keep up. He falls further and further behind Thundercracker’s long stride. His voice grows faint. “Thundercracker, wait! Come back!”

The tunnels grow older and more cramped as Thundercracker speeds down a low-ceilinged passage and into an even more claustrophobic half-collapsed throughway. He turns sideways so his wings won’t scrape the sides. The electricity here has failed or been deliberately disconnected; instead, small blue flames burn in lamps affixed to the walls at odd intervals. They cast a cold light and fill the air with a chemical tang which almost, but does not quite, cover up the rust-and-sour-fuel scent of decay.

Thundercracker’s wings shudder. He’s intimately familiar with that smell. It’s a battlefield revisited several hundred vorns after the carnage; it’s a holed ship floating in the void, all its passengers dead and desiccated. The rust from living metal has a particular tang—one it took a very long time to learn he wasn’t imagining. Hook had explained it: something about breakdown compounds. All Thundercracker knows is the way it tastes almost sweet on his internal sensors, sickly saccharine with the bitter undertone of ash. He clamps his intakes shut. The air is cool enough down here that he won’t need them. Starscream feels close, now, and Thundercracker allows his combat systems to come online just in case. He could be walking into anything. He creeps along the corridor as silently as a thirty-foot seeker can.

The corridor widens into a room without warning. It looks as if it was once part of a library or archival complex: long, deep shelves line the walls and form labyrinthine palisades, interspersed with alcoves where ancient, defunct terminals have been torn out. It’s even damper and colder than Lower Iacon. Vapor rises from his core, collects as condensation on the inner face of his plating, and trickles back unpleasantly into his seams. Whatever this place was built for, it’s been repurposed.

Instead of datapads or archive crystals, the shelves all hold corpses.


	7. Chapter 7

Thundercracker’s combat subsystems snap to full alert. He knew trusting Damus was a mistake. This whole planet is nothing but successive layers of fragged-up scrap and he is _sick of it_. He’s still staring at the corpses when Damus comes jogging up behind him, out of breath, his fans whirring loud. Thundercracker whirls to face him, guns deployed.

Damus bends over gasping, his pincers on his knees. “You nearly left me behind, Thundercracker!”

_That’s_ what he’s worried about? Thundercracker waves a wild hand at the room’s contents. “Damus, _what the frag!”_

“I tried to tell you. The smelting complex—”

“You told me about functionist monsters in the tunnels, not your personal stash of corpses. This isn’t a smelting complex, this is a… A collection!”

“It isn’t a smelting complex_ anymore_,” Damus says. “We had to do something with the bodies.”

Flatly, Thundercracker asks, “Did you really?”

“They deserved some dignity,” Damus mutters. “Anyway the ossuary predates Lower Iacon—it’s the only reason it’s here at all. When the council began their purges they hadn’t thought through the scale of the thing. It wasn’t some datastick mode recall. The cold constructed were half the population by then, even after they shipped everyone they could grab offworld. They flipped a switch and all those undesirables just_ dropped_. The streets were full of corpses. Fuel ran in the gutters. There were so many dead they didn’t catalog them, just shoved them into the charnel pits for processing.” He crosses his arms and looks past Thundercracker, into the ossuary. His optic is the same blue as the lamps burning on the walls. “When this one malfunctioned they didn’t even bother emptying it out. They just shut it up and forgot about it. After a while people came looking; amicas. Conjunxes. Loved ones. People who wanted answers. Over time the pit emptied and the ossuary filled.”

His tone goes a little odd by the end. Thundercracker wonders if that was what first led Damus here; if he’d dug for the corpse of some long-ago friend or lover, layer after layer, just for the chance at closure. He wonders if Damus ever found who he was looking for.

“Is that why you came?” Thundercracker asks.

“I… There was one person. Not an amica, nothing like that. A doctor. He helped re-tune my vocalizer after the procedure. I still held some small value to the functionists, you see, and he’d spoken of improving the articulation of my… My hands. When he vanished I thought perhaps… I don’t know what I thought. I suppose I hoped he’d been deported, but I had no proof.”

“That’s how Lower Iacon was made,” Thundercracker says, slowly. “It wasn’t random. You didn’t _choose_ a smelting complex, you just—”

“Used what was already there,” Damus agrees. “Trespassing was dangerous under functionist rule. They didn’t approve of… _Attachments_. Especially not to the obsolete. Some came to search and stayed rather than risk the surface; others washed up as refugees, so to speak. Lower Iacon took hold. The ossuary became a general site for illicit remembrances. It holds more dead than were ever dumped in the pit.” He rubs one pincer against the other, very nearly sheepish. “For what it’s worth, I _am_ sorry for not giving you sufficient warning. It’s not an easy thing to stumble upon unawares.”

That’s an understatement. Thundercracker tries to imagine that vast, echoing not-a-hangar filled to the brim with corpses and can’t. He’s seen mass graves, but the _scale_—and that’s one pit, in one complex, in one city. Maybe Damus is right: a place is only what’s made of it.

The real problem with Cybertron has never been the planet itself but the people on it.

Thundercracker lets his combat systems fall back into standby. What Damus told him seems true: the corpses stretch away into the distance no matter where he looks, grey and still. When he leans closer it’s impossible to tell their age. Their internal fluids are dust, not a speck of color remaining on dead metal. Many are missing their optics, faces coated in bubbled black streaks, or show signs of head trauma (not even _normal_ head trauma—nothing about this has the decency to be normal), plating warped and starburst-peeled as if blown out from the inside.

And yet, despite the hideousness of their deaths, it doesn’t have the aura of a battlefield. That’s what he notices most as he stalks into the ossuary: no contorted limbs, no faces twisted in agony, no gruesome half-transformations brought on by rigor morphis. They lie in repose as if in recharge, mostly alone but sometimes in pairs or trios. Where the corpses are too large for their shelves they’re propped sitting or lie curled like protoforms. Even when there’s little left but fragments, it’s all weirdly tidy. Some are decorated with small tokens (a few shanix, an image holo, a carved bit of metal). The floor beneath his feet is soft with the thin red-grey rust of decomposition. Thundercracker doesn’t understand it. He understands grief, yes, but not this.

The draw on his spark leads deeper into the ossuary’s dim-lit silence. As little as he likes it he folds his wings close and ducks the low ceiling. There are no straight paths. Rubble and rebuilt walls create obstacles where once there were none, and the dead are endless. Damus trails along beside him, his optic’s light making everything seem colder than it already is.

“If something drew him here, I suppose he really _is_ of this world,” Damus says. “It’s… Hm. I suppose it isn’t a shame, exactly, but I would’ve liked to meet the mech who slit all the functionists’ throats.” He looks up at Thundercracker. “If I may ask—”

“He died,” Thundercracker says, shortly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh.” Damus sags. “That’s always the way, isn’t it? The best of us all imprisoned or lost while the worst remain. When Megatron spoke of him, Starscream always seemed less a mech than a force of nature. Unstoppable, indefatigable, a blazing will… When I think of what became of him here, of either of them—it isn’t right. None of it is right. Megatron went willingly to the Galactic Council’s punishment just so they wouldn’t attack us, as if all he’s done for New Cybertron meant nothing.”

It’s the _weirdest_ thing that New Cybertron knows Megatron only as a rebel and a liberator. As if the war hadn’t happened, only the revolution. As if, when Megatron had slipped between dimensions, he’d left his whole history behind. Praxus never burned (though it’s called Nexion, now). Then again, neither did Vos. It isn’t as if Megatron were the only one with dirty hands. The Autobots can proclaim themselves as innocent as they like, but they’re just as deep in corpses.

“I don’t know how far I’d trust anything Megatron said about Starscream,” Thundercracker says. “They didn’t have the greatest relationship.”

“Megatron said they were often at odds. Still, they were the driving force of an armada for fifty thousand vorns. Surely that counts for something?”

Less than Damus would think. It’s miraculous that Starscream survived the war—survived Megatron—at all. “I guess.”

“I saw the mech Megatron spoke of in the one who defended you today. Even wounded, he fought to keep them from touching you… Even if it was somewhat counterproductive. Megatron also said he was incomparably bullheaded. I suppose that’s true.”

Damus trails off. He looks deeper into the ossuary, the light of his optic shining on the angles of the dead. Thundercracker might be used to corpses but it doesn’t mean he likes them; he especially doesn’t like them watching from every corner with black and hollow optics, the shadows crawling over them like scraplets. 

Damus points. “Thundercracker, look.”

Thundercracker follows Damus’ outstretched claw. A ruddy glow seeps from behind a jumble of shelving. His spark throbs in its housing with the bond’s resonance and he quickens his step and vaults the shelves without a second thought. Starscream’s legs protrude from the alcove he’s crawled into, his damaged paint blinding-bright after all the grey, the sheen of light off living metal something slick and strange. His biolights pulse at their lowest setting, barely enough to see.

“Starscream?” Thundercracker asks.

Starscream doesn’t twitch. The bond doesn’t so much as flicker. Starscream seems unharmed for all that his spark feels—wrong, _wrong_, and Thundercracker sways toward him. He needs to take Starscream from this terrible place, this monument to death.

Damus hurries the long way around the tumbled shelves and throws an arm in Thundercracker’s path. “Wait. Look.”

Thundercracker nearly knocks him out of the way, but as their combined biolights illuminate the alcove, he sees it too: Starscream isn’t alone.

Three seekers curled around one another; three seekers on their sides, legs and fingers intertwined. The practical purpose is likely to keep their wings from trailing into the path, but there’s an intimacy to it. Starscream is brilliant as a jewel between two corpses. Not a scrap of color remains on their frames, their optics shattered, black rivulet stains smeared down their ruined faces; one has a crushed leg as if he crashed badly. It isn’t what killed him. No, that’s the way he’s melted from the inside, internal systems fused, spark extinguished in a runaway containment breach. Thundercracker’s seen it before. It’s a rare and awful way to go. That so many of the ossuary’s occupants show the signs points to an extremely ugly context. It isn’t a way people die by accident.

Thundercracker knows who the seekers are. He knows it down to his foundations. He remembers wearing that frame a long, long time ago. He remembers Skywarp wearing it. He feels detached from himself as he processes that this strange, silent mausoleum is his other self’s final resting place—which is when he finally realizes that it _is_ a mausoleum. The idea is strange and ill-fitting. It strikes him as… Wrong, somehow. Perhaps that’s just wartime pragmatism talking. When the dead are scattered over a thousand worlds and vorns, there’s no sense being sentimental. They’re only empty frames, after all.

There’s something repellant in approaching his own corpse. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, unable either to approach or retreat. The bond’s imperative to take care of his trinemate wars with strut-deep aversion. As he struggles Damus takes a step closer, and another, until he’s near enough to peer into the alcove.

“Starscream, you need to… Oh,” Damus says. “He’s in stasis.”

When Thundercracker edges in (cautiously, in case Starscream springs awake) he finds Starscream’s optic dark, his frame limp, thoroughly unconscious. He’d wandered this far only to succumb to the imperative the medics had forced onto him. Had he meant to come here or had something drawn him? Had he felt that same hook behind his spark, the last echo of a trine long dead?

Is that what Thundercracker’s feeling, black holes where there ought to be people?

Thundercracker doesn’t try to wake him. He just reaches into the alcove, touching the dead seekers as little as possible, and scoops Starscream into his arms. He marches out into the living world at a pace constrained only by Damus’ short legs. Neither says a word as they leave the ossuary behind; as the taste of rust falls away. It seems to take forever, and even longer for the lights of Lower Iacon to straggle back into view.

“I know this is a difficult time,” Damus says, as Thundercracker sweeps the dust from a berth in their quarters and arranges Starscream and his sprawling limbs upon it. Starscream doesn’t seem peaceful, exactly, but at least the awfulness in his spark has faded. He seems even smaller on the berth than he had in Thundercracker’s arms, his wings glaringly absent. Thundercracker finds himself reluctant to take his optics off him, as if he might vanish again. Damus watches from the doorway. “If there’s anything I can do…”

“Not unless you can magic his wings back,” Thundercracker says, more harshly than he means. He regrets it immediately. Creepiness aside, Damus has been nothing but helpful. The least Thundercracker can do is be civil. “Sorry. I’m just… This is a lot.”

“I understand.” Damus dips his helm in an odd little bow. “I’ll take my leave. Just know that my offer was genuine. You’re welcome in Lower Iacon for as long as you need its shelter.”

Thundercracker doesn’t look up as Damus departs. The door hisses shut behind him. Then they’re alone, just him and Starscream.

Thundercracker’s exhausted, processor bleary, weighed down in every limb. When he checks his chronometer he’s surprised to find that nearly three quarters of a cycle has passed since fleeing the hotel. It must be the middle of the night up on the surface. Helping himself to one of the cubes on the table seems like a monumental effort, though he knows it will make him feel better; he talks himself into it, downs a cube almost in a single gulp, and feels his self-repair kick into higher gear. His damaged wing heats with nanite activity. If only he could transfer some of that to Starscream, who still looks like something picked out of a junkheap.

_So much for post-war relaxation_, he tells the memory of his own Starscream. Thundercracker can almost hear his laughter.

He finds his processor wandering back to the ossuary. Try as he might his unease lingers. He tells himself it’s strange but harmless, that he has no room to judge others’ mourning, that he has no idea what traditions have sprung up here, and that even the humans do something similar with their dead (though they have the decency to keep them out of sight, underground), but it’s difficult to make any kind of peace with the memory of his own dead face looking back.

It’s often said that all seekers look similar, forged or not, but this isn’t a similar face. It’s his. _Skywarp’s_. The knowledge that it could’ve been him if things were different… That’s hard to shake.

When he returns to Starscream’s berthside, Starscream is still dead to the world. Thundercracker drags a table in front of the door so he’ll know if Starscream tries to leave, sets an extra-mercury cube on the table by Starscream’s helm, and crawls onto the second berth with a groan. Only as he collapses does he realize how wrecked he is. His frame feels twice as heavy, his raw welds all throbbing beneath the crawling itch of his nanites. He’d forgotten how it was to live this way: hungry, wounded, hunted. Funny how it all comes back.

Recharge claims him in a rolling wave. He lets it take him gladly.

When next he wakes, his chronometer tells him it’s only been two joors.

Thundercracker drags himself unwillingly from recharge. The room is silent. No irritating stimuli rasps at his sensors. Even the trine bond lies quiescent. Why is he awake? All he wants to do is drop back into recharge for the next, say, _forever_, though he knows just as well he can’t. It isn’t how his mind works. In the absence of evidence he’ll lie here wondering what woke him until he checks: a tide of scraplets, an invasion of enforcers, or all the ossuary’s dead rising like empties and staggering down the halls of Lower Iacon to feast on the fuel of the living. He shudders and onlines his optics.

Starscream’s _right there_ looking back.

Thundercracker bangs into the wall in surprise. Starscream’s very close, perched daintily on the side of Thundercracker’s berth and staring down at him, optic huge and luminous as a dying sun. In the dark he seems more like his old self: the dull grey could be white, his shadows blue, the room’s anemic glow washing his edges in red. The image comes unbidden of Starscream entangled with a pair of decaying frames, his spark an abyss. Thundercracker suppresses his shudder. He sits up slowly.

“Starscream?” Thundercracker asks, instead of doing what he wants to, which is freak out. “Are you hungry? I left a cube by your berth. Did you see it?”

Starscream hasn’t touched it. The cube sits where Thundercracker left it, unopened. Thundercracker reaches for it.

Starscream lashes out. Thundercracker freezes. The sharpened tip of Starscream’s claw stops just short of touching his chestplate; it hesitates, then slowly—so slowly—inches forward. Metal meets metal with a dull _tink_.

Starscream sags. He clutches his arms around himself, shuddering all over, his optic a razor-thin line. He makes a rasping sound Thundercracker belatedly realizes is laughter. “I thought you were dead, too. I fought—then it was dark—and I saw—maybe it was a dream?” He shakes his head. Something rattles loose inside his helm, maybe a piece of him or maybe a piece of someone else. “But you’re here. You’re real. I think?”

“I’m real,” Thundercracker tells him, quietly.

Perhaps the effects of the forced shutdown haven’t worn off. He reaches out and takes Starscream’s claw in hand; it trembles as he closes his fingers around it, careful of its sharpened underside. The claws are near useless as anything but weapons, no articulation but a hinge at the wrist. Thundercracker wonders if Starscream can even feel them. Empuratees get the worst grade of everything. That’s the way it’s always been. Starscream is no exception.

The cube is just within reach when he stretches. This time Starscream doesn’t stop him. Thundercracker holds it up. “Extra mercury, your favorite. Will you drink it for me?”

Starscream tips his head back and cycles his intake open without a fuss. It’s such un-Starscreamlike behavior Thundercracker doesn’t know what to make of it, not until he already has a hand on the back of Starscream’s neck to steady him, the other dribbling a thin stream of shining fuel down his throat. There’s trust in it. Implicit trust. The assumption that, no matter what anyone else may have done, Thundercracker won’t hurt him. It’s perfectly Starscreamlike behavior, just not for the Starscream he’s known for the last several thousand vorns.

There was a time when they’d all trusted one another. A long, long time ago. It hurts to remember and only brings the current version of Starscream into sharper focus: scarred and mutilated and de-limbed. How would his Starscream—_Air Commander Starscream, Emperor Perpetua Starscream_—react to any of this?

When the cube is empty Thundercracker disperses it. “Go recharge, Starscream. It will do you good.”

Starscream climbs into the berth with Thundercracker.

Suddenly Thundercracker’s arms are full of clumsy, awkward seeker in a berth not designed for two. Starscream doesn’t pay that any mind. Before Thundercracker can protest Starscream is draped over his legs and canopy, an arm flung across his wings, his helm mashed against Thundercracker’s neck. Starscream fits neatly against his right side, their chests meeting at an angle. Thundercracker’s spark aches. This is how they used to recharge, the three of them; there’s a certain posture a trine has to take to fit together, side by side by side. The space to his left is where Skywarp should be.

Starscream snores lightly. He’s already out again, his optic dark. Thundercracker raises a tentative hand and strokes the back of his helm. Starscream doesn’t stir. Thundercracker tries to follow him into recharge.

He prays not to dream.


	8. Chapter 8

The next time he wakes, Thundercracker doesn’t know if he’s relieved or disappointed not to find Starscream in the berth next to him. He onlines one optic just enough to check that the table’s still blocking the door, catches a glimpse of Starscream in the other room, and turns it off again.

According to his chronometer he’s been in recharge for a solid half cycle. It’s well into the day, but he can tell he badly needed the rest. His repair nanites have been busy. His repairs are a dull ache all through him where they swarm, strengthening his welds and rebuilding the tiny fuel capillaries Ratchet wouldn’t have been able to reach without disassembling him entirely. He tries a cautious stretch and feels them pull. He’s had worse. Frag, he’s _fought_ on worse. Lower Iacon might be a literal pit, but the knowledge that he can just lie here and do nothing seems luxurious.

When he gets tired of running diagnostics, he onlines his optics again. Starscream has found a package of decorative straws somewhere and is painstakingly puncturing the top of a cube. When he manages it he discovers he can’t maneuver the cube to his helm, and so has to lean awkwardly over the table to drink. Thundercracker looks away. At least he won’t have to keep hand-feeding him. Again, he can’t tell if he’s relieved or disappointed about that.

“I know you’re awake,” Starscream says, when he comes up for air. “I can feel you staring at me.”

“I’m not staring,” Thundercracker replies, too quickly.

“Fine, I feel you _thinking_ at me.”

“You know the trine bond doesn’t work like that.”

Starscream makes a scoffing noise and bends back down. When the cube is empty, he disperses it. The straw clatters to the table in a spatter of pink. “Are you planning to tell me why you barricaded the door? Is Lower Iacon’s army of rickety laser pointers and rusty garbage pickers about to swarm us?”

“No,” Thundercracker says, slowly. “You… Wandered out, before. Do you not remember that?”

Starscream shrugs. “I don’t remember a lot of things. I had some—_strange_ dreams.” He pauses, optic unfocused. After a moment he shakes his head. A small fragment of grey metal drops out. He picks it up between two claw-points and studies it, puzzled, then sets it beside the straw. “Is that how I ended up in your berth, or were you itching to get a handful of this?” He gestures lewdly at his own scrawny frame, a cocked hip shown off to very little effect.

Thundercracker sits up, horrified that Starscream would even imply he’d take advantage. “You know I wouldn’t—oh, _ha ha_, hilarious.”

“Please, as if I don’t know you’re a shy little crystal arrangement and proper as a primal monk. Without a bottle of engex and Skywarp to spin your turbines, we’d never have gotten anywhere.”

“Ugh.” Thundercracker groans._ “_Fifty thousand vorns and a parallel universe and somehow you still have the same awful sense of humor.”

“It’s one of my many, many virtues.”

Thundercracker wonders if he should tell Starscream about the ossuary; wonders how much Starscream remembers and how much he’s putting on a front of nonchalance. Starscream’s always been good at tossing obfuscation out like chaff grenades rather than admit anything is wrong. As a general rule, the more put-together he seems, the worse the situation.

No, he has to tell him. He can’t let it lie between them, making everything strange. “Starscream—”

“I’m using the washracks first,” Starscream interrupts. “If this place has any hot solvent, I want it.”

“Starscream, I’m trying to—”

“No takebacks!”

He disappears into the washrack and shuts the door behind him. After a klik comes the creaking of pipes and the hiss of questionably pressurized solvent hitting tile. Thundercracker sags back into the berth and wishes he knew whether it was deliberate evasion or just Starscream being _Starscream_ (which is to say, impossible and irritating and as bullheaded as Damus had named him).

It occurs to him he’s been thinking of his broken trine with a rosy tint and that there were several ways in which they’d all driven each other insane. It had never mattered on the _Nemesis_, but back in Vos Starscream had used up all the hot solvent every morning. It was so predictable that Skywarp had once filled the sprayer head with quick-set dye. Starscream had stumbled out shrieking and bright green. Skywarp had milked those pictures for blackmail for vorns.

By the time Starscream comes out of the washracks, Thundercracker has moved the table back to its proper place, helped himself to another cube from their dwindling supply, and found himself at loose ends. He’s pulled up and closed out of his latest screenplay three times now. The words won’t come. Every time he reaches for them, he sees the ossuary. Being underground has never bothered him before, but Lower Iacon is different; it feels like a closing fist. Their isolation from the main complex only makes things worse. He might understand intellectually that there are a few hundred mechs not so very far away, but the bulkheads swallow all sound as surely as if they were in space.

The room doesn’t have any reading material supplied except for a battered datapad of _Towards Peace_. He puts it back in the drawer where he found it. His wing aches as he does, and he rubs the joint. Ratchet was right: he won’t be doing any flying for a while.

“Don’t pick at it,” Starscream tells him, still damp and faintly steaming.

Thundercracker jerks his hand away. “I wasn’t.”

“Of course you weren’t. That’s why you had your fingers all over your fresh welds. Do you want an infection?” He marches over and peers at the joint. “Look at that. Shameful. You’re rubbing the nanites away. I don’t trust that hackjob doctor _or_ his filthy clinic not to give you a disease. _Racket_ or _Rocket_ or whatever his name was—”

“Ratchet, and he’s a good surgeon. You just don’t like him because he laid you out.”

Starscream huffs. “He wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for your fat frame.”

Thundercracker takes the measure of him. There are several ways in which Starscream has always been easy to read, and the way he won’t quite look at Thundercracker broadcasts embarrassment loud and clear. “You tripped over my unconscious body, didn’t you?”

“I—that’s ridiculous and I would never have—”

“So you did, huh?”

Starscream smacks him in the helm with the flat of his claw. Thundercracker laughs. For a moment his spark feels light.

Time is a difficult thing to judge in the undercity. When they emerge from their quarters and make for the populated parts of Lower Iacon it’s midday, at least by the reckoning of his chronometer. It’s a surprise to find the streets sparsely occupied. Half the shops are shuttered and closed for business. The half that aren’t are staffed by bored-looking mechs who watch them pass, though with little interest. Much of Lower Iacon must be at work, perhaps in Primax above. Its population is just the kind of people who go overlooked in the lowest of jobs—the ones the rich mechs above can’t be bothered to pay a living wage to do.

Starscream stays pressed to his side and glowers at anyone who glances their way. Thundercracker can’t help but be reminded a little of Buster. It’s cute. He can never admit that or Starscream would kill him.

He has vague memories of a detailing shop from his time wandering in circles. It takes only half a joor to find: _Sunrise_ is painted above the door, along with a credible depiction of light breaking over the curve of New Cybertron from space. Thundercracker has been giving some thought to having Starscream’s paint restored—he certainly has the shanix—and he ducks in, careful of his wings. The red mech behind the counter looks up, but Thundercracker thinks the better of things when he sees the state of the tools and the cloudy jars of filtered and re-used paint stripper lined up on the shelves. He ducks back out before his wings can bump anything off the walls.

He has a moment of panic when he doesn’t see Starscream—but there he is just a little ways off, peering at the graffiti that spreads across a wall in lurid purple.

_“Megatron will save us_,” Starscream says. “I’ve seen that before.”

“Yeah,” Thundercracker says. “I think Lower Iacon has a fixation, not that I can blame them. It seems like he’s the only reason the functionists aren’t still deciding who lives and who dies.”

“You’ve mentioned him before. He’s from your world. Some kind of general.” Starscream scrapes a bit of purple away on his claw. He swings to focus on Thundercracker, his gaze no less piercing for being halved. “You said I was his second in command.”

Thundercracker wishes he could remember _what_ he’d said about Megatron, but most of the last cycle is a blur. He hopes he didn’t give too many unnecessary details or tell war stories. There are things no one—especially any version of Starscream—needs to hear. “You were air commander of the Decepticon armada.”

“Did we really burn the towers? What you told Damus—did I—did _he_ really kill the senate and murder the council?” Something hungry lurks behind Starscream’s optic. “Did we make them all die screaming?”

Thundercracker knows what he’s really asking. _Did it work? Were things different? Were they better?_ He sets his hand on Starscream’s shoulder and relishes the feel of solid plating under his palm, the way the trine bond strengthens with contact like an electrical charge. Starscream leans into his touch, whether subconsciously or not.

“It was the end of the golden age,” Thundercracker tells him. “When the revolution began, it started in Tarn. We conquered it first: took over the factories, toppled the palaces and gutted their owners. The rest of the first five cities fell in quick succession: Helex, Vos, Tesarus, Kaon…”

He gives Starscream a condensed history of the war as he steers him gently away from the wall and its graffiti. He’s had a while now to think of how to present it, how to hit the important parts without getting bogged down in the unimportant details or the war crimes. The tale of lowly enforcer Orion Pax’s ascension to the primacy gets him an incredulous stare; the orbital bombing that broke the siege at Tetrahex leaves Starscream both stunned and rapt. Thundercracker pauses at a street vendor to buy two globs of molten rust candy on sticks, thick as taffy and rippling red-gold with heat. They eat sitting on overturned crates just like Lower Iacon’s natives and only as he’s describing the failed peace negotiations when the war was only a few hundred vorns old does he realize they’ve drawn an audience of eavesdroppers.

Thundercracker throws himself into the drama of it just for them: all the most desperate battles and daring plans. His audience might want to hear about Megatron, but he makes Starscream the star. He tells them how Starscream battled dire wraiths in deep space and won a hundred thousand victories; he tells them Starscream served as Megatron’s right hand for fifty thousand vorns and when the war was over was elected president of Cybertron—_Emperor perpetua, High Chancellor of the Refulgent Cybertronian Dynasty_, etcetera etcetera. How he was chosen by a titan, walked with cityspeakers, and reunited the lost colonies. 

“He must have been magnificent,” Starscream says.

Thundercracker can’t help but smile. Only Starscream would call his own counterpart self _magnificent. _What a force of terror they would’ve been if they’d ever met, their plans twice as daring and disastrous. The thought of it sets his spark aching.

“He was,” Thundercracker says. “And reckless, and ambitious, and too smart for his own good. When he set his mind on something he wouldn’t stop until he got it. I envied that, sometimes. That clarity of purpose.”

Starscream seems to bow under the words. “Is that really true? He was emperor?”

“Best planetary tyrant we ever had. Not that it’s a high bar to clear between Sentinel and Nominus, but you were rebuilding—and you didn’t start a war, annex any planets, or commit even one genocide.”

Everyone looks very impressed. Or at least they do until Starscream bolts upright and goes shoving through the crowd. Thundercracker drops his empty stick and hurries after him, knocking mechs out of the way in his haste. He gets caught up in apologizing, the bulk of him too much to bowl through the throng without hurting anyone. He doesn’t catch up with Starscream until they’re three streets away. Starscream stalks forward, shoulders hunched, all tension. Thundercracker reaches to grab his arm, then thinks the better of it. He draws alongside. Starscream speeds up, not looking at him.

“Starscream, what is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a better liar than that.”

Starscream makes a derisive crackling noise somewhere in his throat. “That’s not what you said that time Skywarp ruined your new datapad and made me promise not to tell.”

Thundercracker frowns. “I don’t remember that.”

Starscream stutters mid-step, a full-body tense-and-release that nearly has Thundercracker reaching to support him—but he catches himself and keeps walking, faster than before. “Of course. I’d almost forgotten. You aren’t really—you aren’t—never mind.”

Lower Iacon’s streets are filling with returning workers. They attract curious looks. Soon there will be no privacy to be had at all, and Starscream can snake through the crowd more efficiently than Thundercracker and his wings ever will. If he lets Starscream outdistance him, Starscream will paste his evasive mask back in place and they’ll never talk about whatever this is. On impulse he yanks Starscream into the narrow gap between a sleazy loan office and a cabaret that promises crystal plating and inner workings all on full display.

“What’s wrong, Starscream?” Thundercracker asks again.

Starscream yanks his wrist from Thundercracker’s grip and glares. “Maybe it’s being _shoved into random alleys_.”

“I’m not letting you storm off, then come back and pretend it’s nothing. I know you.”

“You don’t. You know _him_. We aren’t the same person! You had thousands of vorns with him and I don’t even remember what they looked like!”

Silence follows that confession. _They_, Thundercracker wants to ask, but even as the word forms on his tongue, he knows who Starscream means. Starscream looks away, tension in every line of him, his claws clamped together as if they’ll never come apart.

“I don’t remember,” Starscream repeats, more softly. “I dreamed I found them again, but their sparks were cold and they wouldn’t speak to me, because I’d failed. Because I couldn’t—I _hadn’t_—and they’d gone on without me.” He wrings his claws together. What little paint remains scrapes away in curls. “When I try to picture them, I only see you. I know it isn’t right. Their frames were different—rounder? Lighter? My Thundercracker was paler blue, with sharper wings. Their altmodes were more…” He trails off, as if he isn’t certain what their altmodes were more of. “When I try to call up the memory, I can’t. They aren’t there.”

“Starscream…”

“He’s dead, too, isn’t he?” Starscream asks, without looking up. “Your me.”

Thundercracker’s vents cycle all in a rush. It’s still bright, still vivid: Starscream, _his_ Starscream, standing alone with the talisman they’d delivered to kill Unicron; Starscream looking at none of them in that last moment, because none of them had been there to see. There had only been the sick purple flash of the talisman’s destroying light and the hard snap of the trine bond like cable whiplashing. Thundercracker hadn’t had the time to understand what had happened, just the piercing agony of Starscream’s last moment and the sucking hole in his chest where the echo of Starscream’s spark should’ve been. Thundercracker never even saw the place he died, between prying Skywarp out of some Unicronian pitspawn’s jaws and keeping them both alive long enough to land. He had to hear about it second hand from Bumblebee, who had said the talisman obliterated Starscream down to the atoms.

“Yes,” Thundercracker says, each word rough and raw in his mouth, “he’s dead. He… Sacrificed himself. Saved a planet. Saved all of us.” The half-truth is bitter. The real way he died is _alone _and_ abandoned_, the way Starscream had once confessed he’d always thought he would at some early point in the war when he’d been too overcharged to be anything but honest. “I didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late.”

Starscream doesn’t seem like he quite believes it. “And Skywarp?”

Thundercracker’s optics cycle in startlement. “No, Skywarp’s alive!”

“Then why isn’t he here?” Something afraid creeps into Starscream’s tone. “You’re still trine, aren’t you? You didn’t—”

“We’re still trine,” Thundercracker reassures him. “Skywarp is on Earth. I saw him just a few decacycles ago. He joined some human task force, because apparently he does that now. Uh—humans are these little organic aliens? They sort of look like a mech without plating. I swear it’s less gross than I’m describing.” He sets a hand on Starscream’s shoulder but it doesn’t feel the way it did earlier, none of that easy familiarity. “Don’t worry, I’m basically rolling in Earth shanix. We’ll see Skywarp first thing when we get off this disaster planet. I promise.”

Starscream looks away. He doesn’t answer.

The trip back to their quarters is silent and awkward. Thundercracker can’t help casting his gaze down that long hall in the ossuary's direction. Meanwhile Starscream barely looks anywhere but straight ahead, his helm held high. If he still had wings they’d be hiked in aggressive warning. He doesn’t want to be approached or spoken to. Thundercracker knows it will be worse when the door to their quarters closes behind them, the two of them locked into a small space together with no distractions. When Starscream pauses, stymied by the touch-lock, Thundercracker comes to a decision. He clears his throat. Starscream looks at him sharply, but Thundercracker can no longer keep the ossuary to himself; if Starscream’s true trine rests here, he deserves to know about it in more than nightmare impressions.

“That dream you had,” Thundercracker says. “It wasn’t a dream.”

He leads Starscream away from Lower Iacon, away from light and life. His navigation systems still struggle with positioning, but backtracking over his own path is simple enough. Starscream presses closer and closer to him the further they go, as rust creeps up the walls and half-collapsed passages become more numerous. It looks worse at a walk than a sprint. There are pictures on the walls he didn’t notice, unskilled words and images scratched into the metal and half faded themselves with age: sketches of faces, of names, of last wishes and messages to the dead. Starscream presses his wrist to his chest by the time they reach the cold blue oil lamps. Thundercracker feels it, too: the same staticky wrongness that had overtaken them the night before, a terrible draw like a pit-mine’s downdraft. It’s as awful as it is hypnotic, an urging to dash themselves upon the rocks.

He opens his mouth to warn Starscream before they enter the ossuary (Damus was right, it’s a very difficult thing to describe) but Starscream pulls ahead and doesn’t seem to hear him when he speaks; he walks in among the corpses as if drawn on a string. He doesn’t react to the bodies. He barely even glances at them. Instead he goes straight to his trine’s alcove like a sleepwalker and stands staring at their grey frames, at the space knocked between them, at the smudges in the dust. Thundercracker approaches cautiously, unsure whether to offer comfort or keep his silence.

“Well,” Starscream says, lightly, “I suppose this explains why I was picking corpse-metal out of my joints this morning.”

Thundercracker cycles his optics. He’d expected—maybe rage, maybe grief, maybe an emotional breakdown at the revelation that Starscream had been cozying up to his dead trine and had scrubbed bits of them from his seams. Thundercracker knows _he_ wouldn’t be okay after something like that. “If you’d asked, I could’ve told you.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to talk to you about dreaming I’d crawled into a grave and wondering if I’d really done it,” Starscream bites out. “Maybe I didn’t want to seem crazier than I already am. Did you think of that? I never would have come here if not for those medical overrides making me stupid. Look at this place. It’s disgusting, and my trine isn’t here.”

It’s a very odd form of relief to know Starscream thinks the ossuary is as off-putting as he does. Thundercracker looks to the obvious seeker corpses in the alcove. “Um.”

“What’s the use of a frame once the spark’s gone? They’re dead metal with nothing inside. They don’t know I’m here. It’s just… Echoes. A fool’s distress beacon.” He says it as if convincing himself, even as his optic stays fixedly on the dull, flaking angle of wing and limb and shattered cockpit. He rubs his chest again, harder. A thin curl of paint drops away. “I should have died with them.”

“But you didn’t.” Thundercracker reaches for Starscream. He means it to come off as comforting, but Starscream jerks away.

“But I _didn’t_,” Starscream spits, bitter as lye. “They’d be ashamed to see me as I am. I don’t know how you can bear me after your _air commander_, your _Emperor Perpetua_. I must be a terrible replacement. Look at me: no wings, no face, these stupid claws, _useless_—”

“You aren’t useless!”

“I am! I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t stop the functionists from killing y—killing _them_. I watched them die. How can he and I be the same person if he killed the senate and I couldn’t even—I couldn’t—” He shakes his head fiercely. “You always loved stories. You’re lying to me. He was never emperor. He never lead a revolution. He was a cold construct who died in a stupid accident and you’re trying to make it seem grand!”

“I’m not lying! I wouldn’t, not about something like that. I might’ve left out the bad parts, but everything I told you was true. I was there. I saw.”

Instead of the indignant rejoinder Thundercracker expects, Starscream seems to fold into himself. His claws clamp harder onto his chest, drawing beads of sticky energon between seams. Thundercracker swallows his wince. The reaction seems so wrong on him—Starscream has always been a meteor burning across the upper atmosphere, bright and unstoppable. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t _turn inward_. It’s these differences that throw him most; the jarring reminders that this is a very different Starscream from the one he knew.

“You’re lying,” Starscream repeats, weakly.

“You don’t believe that,” Thundercracker says. He sees the truth of it in Starscream’s flinch. “Why refuse to consider it? Why deny that you—”

“Because I didn’t do those things!” Starscream shouts. “Because if I didn’t and I could have, they’re all dead and it’s _my fault!”_

The words ring in the ossuary’s silence; they hang between them like the hulks of dead ships in the void. Starscream looks him in the face only for a moment before he’s back to staring at the remains of his ruined trine, and Thundercracker can tell he’s not nearly as unaffected as he pretends. There’s a glassy sort of affect people take on when they’re papering over things they really, really don’t want to think about and he sees it in Starscream, like he’d crawl out of his own frame if he could.

“Of course it wasn’t your fault,” Thundercracker says. “You can’t blame yourself for… What, not personally overthrowing a whole planet? He wasn’t better than you, Just different. The entire world was different. If you’d tried to change Cybertron by yourself they’d only have killed you, Starscream.”

“You don’t know that,” Starscream says, raggedly. Then, “maybe they should have.”

“I _do _know that. The only reason we got as far as we did was…” _Was Megatron_, in truth, though he doesn’t want to say it; Megatron was what kept them all going in the same direction, the lodestar that filled their heads with dreams of the way the world could be. He supposes this world’s Megatron died somewhere along the way, too early to make a difference: crushed in a mine collapse, whipped to death by a careless overseer, quietly executed after his first bit of seditious writing. The _how_ of it doesn’t matter. He may as well never have existed. “It was cooperation. Blame the functionists if you need to blame anyone. You couldn’t have taken them down on your own.”

“Why not? _He_ did! He got rid of them all!” Some of the fierceness returns to Starscream’s tone. He whirls to face Thundercracker, voice rising. “Why couldn’t I have done the same? But I kept my head down like a good little cold construct and what did I get for it? I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even die right! I had to let them do whatever they wanted for vorns and vorns and _vorns_ and you’re telling me I could’ve _killed them all before it even began?_”

By the end his voice is a furious shriek, near-incomprehensible with rage and self-loathing. He lunges at Thundercracker. It’s the kind of irrational move he’d expect from Skywarp (Starscream’s more of the knife-you-in-the-back type) but Thundercracker’s more than quick enough to catch Starscream by the wrists before the blows connect. Starscream shrieks like escaping steam and tries to wrench free. In this sort of mood he’s liable to do anything. Thundercracker grips him tighter and lets him exhaust himself. He weathers the fury, the kicking, and the semi-coherent insults until Starscream slumps, frame heaving, fans whirring loud with exertion.

“I hate you,” Starscream says.

“You don’t,” Thundercracker answers.

Starscream slumps further. His optic is dull, whole self subdued. For a long few kliks there’s nothing but the hum of fans and the _ping_ of his cooling plating. That’s more like the Starscream Thundercracker knows, dramatics and all. Thundercracker decides they’ve spent more than enough time in the ossuary and it’s a simple thing to put Starscream’s feet on the ground and tug him along in the direction of the exit. Starscream comes quietly, puffs of red-grey dust kicking up at his heels. He makes no attempt to escape Thundercracker’s grip.

“You must hate me,” Starscream says, softly.

“Of course not.”

“Prove it.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

Starscream halts. When Thundercracker looks back at him, that red optic is full of determination. “Interface with me.”

Thundercracker nearly chokes on his own tongue. “Inter—_what?”_

“You heard me,” Starscream says, as if he didn’t just tell Thundercracker to _interface with him_ in the middle of a crypt. And sure, interfacing is a normal trine activity, but these are far from normal circumstances. Starscream’s fumbling with the panel in his side before Thundercracker’s processor catches up. As he draws out a spool of cable, Thundercracker wants to look anywhere else. He goes hot with pure weapons-grade embarrassment.

“_Please_ put that away.”

“No.” Starscream’s cable is chipped and scratched in the same pattern that rings his throat, as if he could never quite get a grip. Thundercracker tries not to look at that, either. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. It can be clinical. I can even make it good if you want. I just—I need to know who I could have been, I need to see—”

He reaches for Thundercracker’s panel. Thundercracker shoves him a half-step back. Starscream goes very still, optic contracted to a pinprick.

“O—oh,” Starscream says, unevenly. “I understand. You don’t… You don’t want to touch me.”

This is getting out of hand. “Starscream, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“You don’t need to lie. I know what I look like. What I _am_.” He tries to stuff his cable back into its housing but can’t get the angle right. His claw tip gouges a thin line along sensitive metal. He hisses. “Well, frag you very much, fake Thundercracker. Where do you get off looking like an ad for wing polish and heavy armaments? We can’t all be so lucky! Some of us were made cheap—”

“Starscream, _shut up_ for two kliks! I’ve seen you—other you—gutted and de-limbed and with your face smashed down to the cranial casing. I’ve seen you staggering around with a fusion blast hole punched through your torso that was so disgusting the constructicons had to take turns patching it. Trust me, there’s been worse. This has nothing to do with how you look.”

“Then why?”

“Uh, because this situation is twelve kinds of fragged?” Thundercracker waves at their audience of corpses. “I know you, but also technically we just met? We’re hiding in a dirty hole in the ground, hunted by enforcers, visiting your dead trine, and you want to interface? I don’t know what you went through with Decanter or the functionists but it sounds like a technicolor holovid nightmare and I don’t want to make it worse. _Is this really the best time?_”

Starscream stares, head cocked, as if he can’t quite make sense of what Thundercracker has said. “You actually care.”

“Of course I care. We’re trine!”

“You really are him,” Starscream murmurs. “Thundercracker from another universe.”

“That’s me, all right. Good old Thundercracker.” He hurries Starscream out of the ossuary before any more slag can happen. Starscream comes along, subdued, and Thundercracker is sure he’s never been so glad to see anything as he is when the lights of Lower Iacon fade back into view. The relief lasts about two nanokliks after they get into their quarters and he realizes they’re once again alone with one another.

Starscream makes a beeline for the washracks and shuts the door behind him; Thundercracker sags into a chair that might’ve been nice about twenty vorns before he was forged. He sighs deeply. There’s still a small pile of energon cubes on the table, but he can’t bring himself to drink. Somehow his life has become a parody of itself. He wishes he could ask Marissa for advice, but the situation is likely beyond her wheelhouse. What do you do if a quantum duplicate of your dead trinemate tries, no matter how poorly, to seduce you?

But it’s true, interfacing can also be clinical. More than once he’d handed over intelligence to Soundwave just like that, a reel of memories without emotions. Does he owe Starscream the memories of his alternate self? Would it help to give them freely?

Starscream doesn’t come out of the washrack. Not until the cycle draws to a close. Thundercracker goes into the berthroom and feigns recharge, his mind whirring as his body is still; after what seems like forever, the washrack door unlatches. Starscream creeps in, step by step. He makes to lie on his own berth, then hesitates. When Thundercracker onlines his optics just a sliver he sees Starscream standing in the dark, staring at nothing. He seems lost.

“Starscream,” Thundercracker says. Starscream twitches as if to bolt back to the washracks. Thundercracker catches his claw before he can. He’s had nothing to do but think. “Wait. I’ll show him to you, if you really want me to.”

“Forget it. It was stupid. He isn’t me and I’m not him. He was… So much more.” Starscream looks away. “Maybe it’s better not to know.”

“Do you really think that, or are you afraid?”

“I’m not _afraid_, you insufferable…” Starscream squints at him. “_Ha. _Well, look at you. Reverse psychology. When did you get smart?”

“Vorns of tricking Skywarp into working his duty roster. Come here. Sit.”

He pats the berth beside him. For a long moment Starscream doesn’t move. When he finally does, it’s slow as a wary mechanimal, as if he hadn’t been popping his panels for Thundercracker only a few joors before. Eventually Starscream offers up his cable and Thundercracker takes it in hand; he unwinds it from its housing. It feels much the same as it ever has. Thundercracker’s cable is newer but has the same pin configuration. They swap connections in silence. It all seems weird and stilted without foreplay. No touching, no banter, none of the ease that comes with having known someone for a century or ten. Trine or not, they’re nearly strangers. The connection snaps into place and the world falls away.


	9. Chapter 9

The initial system handshake sends a shiver of familiar charge through Thundercracker’s cortex, but other than that, it’s nearly sterile. He can’t shed the feeling that he’s in the middle of the weirdest medical diagnostic he’s ever had. His system aligns with Starscream’s; it’s been a long time since Thundercracker has done this, but he remembers how Starscream has always felt: bright and bombastic, all unpredictable directions, crashing through firewalls as if naturally they can do nothing but fold before him.

It throws him off when this Starscream isn’t any of that. He comes in honed and purposeful: an arrow, a needle, his whole personality clamped into an iron-hard shell. Thundercracker brushes at Starscream through the trine bond, questioning. He leaves himself open but sees nearly nothing of Starscream in return. Starscream only makes the shell harder.

Thundercracker falters. He casts about for an offering, something Starscream might want to see. He plucks some of his more recent memories of his dead trinemate and presents them: _Starscream, his Starscream, in deep discussion with that shiny Velocitronian representative. Starscream and Windblade. Starscream when he’d visited Thundercracker at the EDC and said, _I want you to make a movie. _Starscream at a conference on Earth he only reluctantly attended, and only then because it afforded him the opportunity to wear a cape. Starscream’s office in Metroplex overlooking the remnants of ruined Iacon, his wings a sharp silhouette against the stars, his chassis red and bright and new. _A hot spark of emotion erupts from the Starscream before him, there and gone before he can identify it.

“I told you,” Thundercracker murmurs. “Emperor of Cybertron.”

Starscream says nothing in return, only digs deeper. His mental claws are sharp in Thundercracker’s memories. Thundercracker offers them up freely. He has very little to hide. Images flicker past in fragments as Starscream hops from one to the next, all frantic speed, out of order: _he, Skywarp and Thundercracker drinking at Maccadam’s long before the war. The bridge of a darkened ship thousands of vorns later. Starscream half-slagged on a battlefield and knee-deep in corpses but grinning, Starscream on the senate floor, Starscream on his knees before Megatron in the arena’s bowels the day they’d joined the Decepticons, Starscream in a crown—_

That emotion swells again, building and building like rising charge, and Thundercracker realizes Starscream is deeply, _viciously_ jealous.

He raises a reassuring hand to stroke the angle of Starscream’s wing nub. Starscream barely twitches. The shadow of Starscream’s other self spreads like a stain. There’s only seething jealousy deep as the pit itself, a horrible, hungry thing threatening to devour him.

“That’s only part of it,” Thundercracker tells him, before Starscream can get the wrong idea. There’s no version of Starscream anywhere that wasn’t fifty percent disaster at all times. “It wasn’t all victories.”

With that comes the swirling echo of a hundred thousand bad days. The worsening war. The things they’d all become. _Megatron_. He tries to skirt around that (there’s a lot of ugliness there, very little of which he wants to inflict on anyone else) but it seeps through in toxic drips no matter how he tries; there’s so much more than he’d thought. The terrible things they’d done, the things he’d forgotten accidentally-on-purpose, the way they’d all hated each other by the end. He only barely keeps the second-hand memory of Skywarp watching Megatron nearly beat Starscream to death from spilling out. Their trine had only just begun to patch things up before Unicron had come and… 

Before Unicron.

“Not all victories,” Starscream answers, soft and bitter as death. “He killed the senate, and the functionists, and a living _planet,_ and he ruled Cybertron and his trine survived _fifty thousand vorns_ but it’s fine because it wasn’t all victories? He had everything! He had everything, and he _wasted it!_” Starscream’s grip tightens. His clumsy talons score lines in Thundercracker’s plating. A tidal wave of emotion rolls through their connection, all _fury-despair-self-loathing._ “It’s not fair. I should have done that. Me! It should have been me!”

It’s petty and nonsensical, but _petty and nonsensical_ is the way it goes when Starscream’s spiraling. Thundercracker knows better than to take it personally. He tries to send his reassurance through the bond. “Starscream, listen—”

Starscream shoves it away. “Don’t say my name like that. Does your pity make you feel like a good person? Are you proud of yourself for being nice to a knockoff of a knockoff? Don’t pretend. The only reason you give a frag about me was that I reminded you of your trinemate and as soon as you realize I’m not him—”

“You’re still Starscream,” Thundercracker insists. “You’re still trine! So what if you aren’t him? What do you think I am? You think I’d throw you away just for that?”

“Yes!” Starscream bursts out. “Why wouldn’t you? Just look at me!”

The carefully-constructed shell around Starscream’s self weakens as he speaks. Thundercracker glimpses bits of him through the cracks, moments without context; behind those moments he glimpses something lurking, a great heaving dark shape like a scabbed-over tumor. Every one of Thundercracker’s memories—of _Emperor Starscream_, of _Air Commander Starscream_, threatens to rip it open. As he stares Starscream goes diving back into those memories as if he can’t help himself, though every one cuts. Starscream scours them with single-minded fervor, and Thundercracker extends his own feelers.

He maps the contours of the mass as best he can, careful not to alert Starscream to what he’s doing. The shape of the code makes him uneasy. It’s something encrypted and compressed and re-encrypted so many times it’s decrepit, the processing equivalent of a collapsing sun. When he dares poke the top layer of encryption it crumbles into garbage data, corroded as salt-eaten metal. Inertia is all that keeps it contained.

“Don’t look at that.” Starscream’s attention is suddenly on him. The mental shove is anything but gentle. “Get away from there. It isn’t important.”

Thundercracker stands his ground. He’s seen processor damage before, though not so intimately. It’s also self-inflicted. Starscream’s ident signature is all over the thing. “This is corrupt. Look at it, half the sectors touching it are going. How have you not glitched out yet? I’m making Ratchet run a full defrag—”

“I said don’t touch it!”

The shove comes again, harder to resist. Starscream knocks Thundercracker out of his head with the full force of his considerable personality. Thundercracker goes reeling. Crumbling encryption snags him as he does. It unravels like rotten rubber, layers and layers of poorly patched code disintegrating and Starscream rounds on it frantic but not quick enough—

.  
.  
O̜̟͚̗̹͇̟͂̆͗͑̍́̇̑p̵̡͕̥̝͈̬͍̍̓͆̊̅̏̀͘͘ę̵͓͕̲͖̼͓̜̭̇̂̊͟͠͡n̶̡̺̙̤̤͚̘͊̑͊̊̎͌̏͘͠ s̛̛̜͓̔̾́̃̆̍̈́͟͢͢ͅk̷̢̧̢̫͍̲̣̩͇̫̽̄̋̉̔y̰̰͇̜̣͆͂̓̔͐̋̈́̓̐͟  
̴̢̭̹̖̈́̆̑̿̿̂͜͠͠  
͙͕͓̲͕͙̰͉̤͛̆̃̃̈  
̴̛̻͓̤̳͍̖̿̿̈́͘͜͝ͅ  
̵̠̮̹̣̟̪͇̔̎́̽̋͑̅͟͡͡C̴̢̡͙̩̤͇̤̣̝̀̊͐̕̚͢͡o̢̦̖̦̖̠̟̹̳͑̊̈́͠n̷̡̛̗̻͉̗̓͊͛͊̎͘ṫ̸̩̗͖̫̫̤̿̏͂̆͐̅̚̕r̷̛̹͎͍̱̘̓̓͊̿̑̿̌a̸̧̧̱̺͍͚̐͑͌̉͗͂̿̿͡į̪̱̞̺͖̀͐̿̉̐͛̊̾̂͢l̸͕͚̘̠͙͐͒̈̎̄̿͞  
͕͉̘̙̞͑̇͆̈̇͌̽̇̄͝  
̴̡̼̬̞̳̞̖̮̠͚̾͗͑͡͡  
̨̠͓̪̪̜͑͆̇̀͘͜  
̧̪̩̦̮̮̟̟͋͒̉̉͒A̸̛̦̞͓̭̳̻͂̋̓͘ͅ f̛̠̦͕̲̺̺͖̒̎͛̀͘͝l̢̖͇̳͕̗̓̌̋͊̓̏̓̚͜͢͡ą̨̳̫̬̽̑͒̓̈̃͟͡͞s̛̖͉̗̰̫̣̻̓͊̽͆͐̓̈́͘͜͢͡h̸̢̬̳̼̹͍͈̝̹͛͐͐̾̕ ỏ̧͖̦̼̩̟͎̹̄̏̽̿͞f̡̳͖̳̞̅̎̒̄̈́̓̚̚ p̡̡̟̣͚̯̟͙͔͒̌͒̑͘͞͞͡u̠̬͈̮̾̀̎͊̌ͅr̸̛̗̩̘̬̜̺̭̟͖̓̆̀͛̀̎͐p̜͉̜̰̘̮̙͍̽̓̓̈́̽̋͜͡l̮͇͎̂͊̉̌̏̍͜͜ẻ̵̖̠̪̣̰̭̔̍̅̏̿͠ w̴̨̡̝͎͇͖͔̦̆̐̇͗̏̅̍͋i̡̥̫̦͔̗̥̭̭͖͌̓͋͐̿͒̇̐̕n̥̰̞̤̞̞͔̻̈́̌̎̉͘͟g̢̛̠̭̮̻͇̺̣̥̔͑̃̃͆͒̋̿̎  
.  
.

With a sudden, disorienting wrench, Thundercracker is soaring through the sky above Iacon.

Not Primax, _Iacon_. Iacon as it was fifty thousand vorns ago, a shining network of buildings and roadways spread beneath glittering stars, so familiar it hurts. It’s beautiful from the air. From up here you can’t see the rust at the foundations. Jagged skyline streams past as he tries to work out what’s happened.

“Starscream,” he says, and, [Starscream?] but there’s no answer.

It’s a memory. It _must_ be a memory, but he can’t sense Starscream, or the interface connection, or the trine bond. He can’t even feel his own body (which is presumably on the berth where he left it). If this is a memory Starscream should be here with him, but it’s as if Thundercracker’s fallen headlong into a full-immersion holosim, subsumed in someone else; everything seems real, from the air currents over his wings to the telemetry telling him he’s passing over the industrial district. The warm updrafts of the smokestacks buoy him up. He tastes particles of pollution on his plating. Movement registers to his port side and he has another, deeper moment of disorientation as he sees himself pull ahead in formation.

His other self wears the frame he had before the war: not his original, but the one he and Skywarp had taken to match Starscream in what they’d later learned was a complex tax evasion scheme (of course, by the time the debt had come due, the world had been largely on fire). His instruments inform him that Skywarp is close behind. He realizes belatedly that in this memory he _is_ Starscream; he tries an experimental waggle of his ailerons and gets nothing. Full-immersion or not, he’s only a passenger.  He watches Iacon’s glittering sprawl spread below and tries to pin a date on the memory. He doesn’t remember this flight. True, it was a long time ago, but he has a sneaking suspicion it was after the divergence. Whatever this is, it never happened to him.

Same old Skywarp, though. Skywarp teleports to spin a tight loop around them both and Thundercracker can’t help his amusement at Starscream’s irritation.

[You’re wasting fuel,] Starscream gripes.

[Come _on_, Screamer. This is the first time we’ve been up in cycles.] Skywarp flips upside down and flies like that, belly to the sky. [Stupid council. Stupid flight restrictions. Live a little!]

[We have more important things to do than play games.]

[Someone woke up on the wrong side of the berth this morning. Look, we’ll check the registry at Perdi Annex. It’ll be fine. He’s probably just flying rich diplomats around.]

_Perdi Annex?_ It takes a klik for Thundercracker to figure out why that’s familiar. There had been a spaceport there before the war (it had shortly thereafter ceased to exist, and Thundercracker has only the vaguest memories of it—a lot of glass and bare metal, hopelessly old-fashioned). When he looks ahead he thinks he spots it in the distance, glittering with light. He wants to go faster, but it’s getting harder to get anything above mid-grade these days and his engines can’t—

Oh. _That’s_ weird. Those aren’t his thoughts.

[I haven’t seen him in a decacycle,] Starscream says, terse. The conversation has gone on while Thundercracker was distracted. [We were supposed to meet in the academy courtyard two cycles ago and he never came. He isn’t answering his comms.]

[Because he’s probably off-world flying rich diplomats around!] Skywarp repeats. [You know how it is with shuttles. If they want to keep fueled, they better jump when the council says.]

[Skyfire would at least have left a message. You know what they’re saying in Kaon—]

[The same things they’re always saying in Kaon,] the memory of Thundercracker says. [Locking people into altmode and selling them to aliens? I don’t know. It’s a little far-fetched.]

[And how many shuttles have you seen around lately?] Starscream asks. [They’re already shipping cold constructs offworld. The only reason they haven’t tried to grab me yet is they can’t tell one seeker from another.]

[Aw, we wouldn’t let them take you, Screamer. Imagine you on some backwater mudball, up to your thrusters in swamp! You’d never survive.]

[As if you’d do any better with mud up your thrusters!]

Thundercracker finally remembers who Skyfire is (that big white Autobot shuttle? Huh, go figure. He hadn’t known he and Starscream knew each other). Other-Thundercracker and Skywarp are still talking but Starscream has stopped paying attention, so their comms are an indistinct mumble. He’s too busy thinking about Skyfire and how it isn’t just the cold constructs disappearing. How the satellites and the scout ships and the deep-space alts are vanishing, too, either smelling danger on the wind and getting out while the getting’s good, or… Not that.

Starscream hopes Skywarp is right. He hopes Skyfire has been roped into doing the council’s work. He hopes Skyfire is one of the runners, racing ahead of the blast radius of whatever’s coming. He also knows Skyfire isn’t the type. He’s big and soft and rule-abiding and it wouldn’t occur to him to flee, but if he can just reach Perdi Annex and check their departure records, maybe—

_Pain._

It hits without warning, sharp and vicious as if his spark’s ripped in two. It cuts to the core of him with breathtaking violence, paralyzing, inescapable, reflected and amplified from three angles: Skywarp, Thundercracker, himself. He can’t think past the screaming. Starscream hits the ground blind and burning, his system shrieking corrupt warnings as his gyros spin and he fights to tell which way is up. His wing shatters. He’d half-transformed as he fell, some reflexive attempt to escape the fire burning through his frame; he drags himself through the rest of the change now, agonizing, wet with sticky fluid that oozes black and thick from his mouth and tastes of burning circuitry. His joints feel full of broken glass. His left optic cracks and seeps black tears. Within his chest, Skywarp and Thundercracker’s sparks shudder in time: fluttering, dying.

He sees them through the smoke, two crumpled heaps of metal downed and thrashing. Their pain bleeds across the bond until he’s not sure where it ends and he begins. His head is full of static. All he understands is that his trine needs him. That he needs them. He drags himself across the road surface, hand over hand, paint and fuel and black fluid streaked behind him as his spark flares. He collapses next to his trine and knows he’s dying. That they’re all dying, and no one is coming to help.

“Skywarp,” he says, a choking rasp. “Thundercracker?”

Skywarp makes a low sobbing noise as his warp drive tries and fails to engage, all automatic flight reflex. His cockpit has shattered in the fall. Starscream sees inner workings where there shouldn’t be, all heaving and pulsing with that same black slurry of energon and molten plastic that coats his mouth. He realizes distantly that he’s overheating. They’re all overheating as their sparks lose containment. Their ventilation systems won’t turn on and it’s roasting them alive. Someone, somewhere, _somehow,_ has flipped a switch and just like that it’s killing them.

Not just them. Cold-constructed racers writhe in the road half-transformed. A forged helicopter smashes into the side of a building, trailing smoke. The air rings with screaming, but the screaming in his head is louder. He has optics only for his trine. Some part of him is convinced that if only he can reach them, he can save them; that all the cleverness that’s gotten him through life will be enough. He drags himself closer, chassis scraping over hard ground, heedless of the mess he’s leaving. His frame pulses in time with his spark. He reaches for his trine.

Thundercracker flinches at the contact. Skywarp hardly seems to notice, his sobbing replaced with a raw, rasping sound. His optics gutter like dying flames. Starscream’s own optics succumb to over-pressure and shatter. Burning black streaks his face. His visual feed fails, his system alerts unintelligible glitches. His spark feels caught in a vice. When his arms give out and he topples to lie across Skywarp, suddenly he knows this is it. This is all. The pain rises to an unbearable crescendo, something nearly transcendent. He feels outside himself, lying tangled with his dying trine. All he can think is that at least they’re doing it together.

Starscream wakes up.

For a long moment he thinks it’s all been a terrible dream. That he’s lying safe with his trine in their apartment and at any moment he’ll rise and stretch the kinked lines in his back, always cramped from piling into a too-small berth; that Skywarp will roll over and bury his face against the wall, demanding five more kliks even as Thundercracker shuffles to the next room to measure out half-rations of midgrade. He thinks about the washrack and its limited supply of hot solvent, and his dwindling bottle of polish, and wasn’t he supposed to do something today? He was going somewhere. The spaceport?

When he tries to online his optics they don’t respond.

His systems diagnostics lurch to life in a spray of glitching alerts and warnings, all red. The pain comes next, sharp enough to take his breath away. It’s not the all-consuming fire of death but a low, throbbing ache like his every circuit has been dipped in acid. His head rings with a noise like heavy traffic; his thrusters are offline. So’s pretty much everything else. Moving is agony but he can’t stay still. He flips himself over, jerky and halting. He can’t move right. He’s still blind. He finds the familiar shape of a wing under his hand.

“Skywarp?” He asks, or tries. It emerges as a hiss of static.

His hand sweeps further: the swell of a cockpit, a turbine, an unmoving face. He remembers falling. He remembers his trine dying. The broken bonds are two holes like knife wounds. He can’t think. How has he survived? Everything’s muddled, all looping nightmare fragments. Didn’t he see Skywarp’s cockpit smashed? Maybe this is Thundercracker. He reaches further, groping for Skywarp. He finds another body, its plating already cool under his fingers. Arm, shoulder, cockpit… Rotors?

For a moment he can’t process it. Then, slowly, he reaches in a different direction.

Wherever he sets his hand he finds corpses. The ground beneath him is uneven; it isn’t ground at all. The remnants of his flight sensors come together to tell him the truth he already knows: he’s been dumped into a charnel pit awaiting the smelter, and he sits atop a heap of the dead. The traffic sound is the incessant clatter of bodies falling. If he stays where he is, he’ll be buried.

He can’t move. He doesn’t know where his trine is. If they’re even in the same pit. If they’ve been smelted already, rendered down to ingots and _sentio metallico_ for the council’s next project. He tells the open wounds in his spark that it doesn’t matter; they’re gone. Their sparks went out as easily as oil flames. All he wants to do is lie down and join them, but he’s always had a finely-honed survival instinct. Thinking is near impossible, but his mangled wings twitch in the feeble currents that stir the fuel-choked air. They map the slope of corpses and the walls of the pit.

He climbs.

It seems like decavorns later that he pulls himself over the lip of the pit, bleeding and dizzy and fading. His fans screech in warped housings, struggling to cool the places his internal insulation has melted. He has less than fifteen percent fuel. Every subsystem’s in the red. He can’t stand. He lies there helpless and panting and trying not to overheat again; it might just fry him for good. Part of him wants it—to topple back into the pit riding that bright peak of agony, to join Skywarp and Thundercracker and probably Skyfire, to let his spark wink out. He doesn’t have the strength.

Time takes on a syrupy quality; footsteps approach after what could be kliks, joors or vorns. Starscream certainly can’t tell. They come to a halt a short way off accompanied by an odd whisper: the rustle of cloth on plating. A metalmesh cape? That’s strange, so strange. He’s only ever seen a mech wearing a cape on vidfeeds, all primes and councilors and regnants—

“How curious,” someone says.

The voice is cultured, clipped, and so stripped of emotion as to be nearly artificial. Starscream recognizes it but doesn’t know why. He hardly knows anything, he finds, his memory banks half disconnected. He reaches for the voice, or he tries. His fingers barely twitch, hands splayed on dirty metal.

“Please,” Starscream says, half intelligible.

“Please what, flightframe? You’ll have to speak up. I can hardly hear.”

“My trine…”

“Dead, I’m afraid.” The voice doesn’t sound sorry at all, in the same way it doesn’t sound _anything_. Mesh whispers as the mech moves. A knee joint creaks. Starscream’s visual feed resolves enough to see the shadow bending over him, the vast yellow optic. “So should you be, flightframe. _Cold construct_. You’re obsolete.”

He shoots Starscream in the chest.

Hot agony sparks bright as a supernova, all-pervading white just as awful as the darkness, then n̸̨̬͙͚͉͉͙͒̏͆̑́͒͗͟͟͞ͅó͈̪̥̮̗̀̊́͛̊̈́ṱ̡̺̤̞̗̽̇̌̿͘͜͝h̵̬͓̖̥͖͙̳̘̺͓̑̿̿̽͠ĭ̴̢̺̻̻͉͙̙̠̫̀̎̈͌͜n̨͓̫̰͇̺͈̣͚̔͊͑̇͜͞͝ģ̢͙̠̰̻̥͙̋͋͌͌͘͜͞ͅ—̷̝̩̻͙̱̼̱͓͒͌͗̑͐̾̓̕͜͝  


And somehow he’s back on the ground, fans roaring, visual feed juddering back into alignment just enough to register _tall_ and _thin_ and _no face_ and his systems are even more fragged than they were and he has nine percent fuel and he tries to speak but chokes on energon instead and his chest is an open wound with his spark pulsing in its cracked casing and why isn’t he dying why can’t he _die_—

“Fascinating,” says Six-of-Twelve, The Enactor, sixth member of the Functionist Council and overseer of the purge of the undesired. “An unquenchable spark. Primus smiled the day he made you, didn’t he? Or he would have, if he’d made you at all. You’re a slip of the technician’s hand, perhaps. A mistake.”

Starscream spits a mouthful of energon and black tar at Six-of-Twelve’s feet. Six-of-Twelve kicks him, casually. Starscream can’t even fold around the pain, all his systems misfiring.

“This promises some fascinating research,” Six-of-Twelve says, as if nothing has happened. “Two-of-Twelve will be delighted to have you in the lab. There are so many things we’d like to know about spark resonance that are unfeasible for practical testing. You can make a great contribution to your betters.” He brushes a fleck of black from his cape. It lands on Starscream’s cheek. A hand touches Starscream’s face a moment later, cool and impersonal. Starscream longs to bite but can’t find the strength. “How lovely for you, cold construct. You have a purpose after all.”


	10. Chapter 10

The memory becomes unfiltered nightmare heavy with juddering corruption, a jumble of images as Starscream’s encryption and re-encryption takes its toll: a barren cell, a surgical suite, experiment upon experiment and other prisoners seen only in glimpses and a thin orange mech with glasses even more heavily restrained than he is and an enormous blue one with finials who looks so _blank_ all the time that it scares him like there’s nothing left of him at all and the experimenter’s disinterested optics as they test his chassis to its limits and discover it doesn’t matter what they do to his body, his spark leaps back to life after all of it, inexhaustible. They want to be _forever_ just like him, want to be gods—

[Stop]

His first escape attempt when he’d killed two guards, and they’d taken his face; the second, his hands. Third, his wings. How eventually (_eventually eventually eventually_) he’d given up, and the researchers had given up on him as a mutant freak with no research applications and they’d forgotten about him and left him in the dark for so long that the outside world seemed like a dream and how he barely _had_ been more than a drone when they’d sold him to Decanter, dim and confused. He remembers a chain; he remembers being dragged, remembers Decanter’s delighted face, _What a prize, one of a kind_—

[Stop, this isn’t—]

He doesn’t remember when he lost track of the joors, cycles, vorns. Time slips past in grey streams punctuated by violence. Decanter has other slaves and they try to speak to him but he lashes out and he’s forgotten how to be a person. After the first few failed attempts they leave him alone. He keeps killing them in the arena and when they get the better of him he gets up again after and they count it as monstrous unfairness, count it as _cheating_, but he doesn’t want to make friends doesn’t want to be here doesn’t want to go on but can’t stop himself no matter what he does and how long does it take to stop trying and realize that this is what he will be forever a thing an object and there’s no way out no one waiting just _him_ on and on and on—

[This didn’t happen to you!]

Thundercracker jolts awake and drags himself from the riptide. It’s like surfacing from drowning. Compressed data sucks at him like a black hole; the rush of memory threatens to pull him under and he digs his fingers into his hip seam just to distract himself with pain. “Starscream, _stop_. It’s over!” 

The part of him not occupied with fighting free of the onslaught sees their dim-lit quarters, sees Starscream rigid and staring at nothing, his optic a red pinprick. He’s caught in that roiling sea of memory too, CPU cycles eaten up at an alarming rate as he processes the last few thousand vorns all at once. If Thundercracker doesn’t snap him out of it, it will drag them both under until they both overheat and soft-lock. 

Fortunately, he knows how to handle it.

Thundercracker grits his teeth and digs up a good memory: _Amanira II. _They’d had a mining base there for a stretch in the middle of the war, the planet itself unremarkable except for the high concentration of duryllium under the crust. It had no native lifeforms but the slow-growing crystals that pushed their way toward the soft pink sky. There had been little for the seekers to do (being ill-suited for mine labor) and so Thundercracker had spent much of his time flying for the joy of it on the flimsy pretext of recon. He never saw a single autobot. It’s his favorite memory of the war.

He shoves it at Starscream as hard as he can; he throws it down like a stone shattering a mirror. There’s a deeply confusing moment—_pink-prison-flying-pain-crystals-sky-corpses-arena_—then they’re drifting low and slow through the mineral-rich atmosphere of Amanira II, nothing but the wind on their wings and the jeweled glow of the crystals as they bank between them, each one tall as the fallen spires of Vos. He senses Starscream with him, piggybacking disoriented as his processor cools off. The memory loop keeps trying to reassert itself. Thundercracker throws more crystals and peaceful patrols at it until it fades under the onslaught. He can do this for joors if he has to.

Starscream doesn’t speak, only watches. The atmosphere tastes sweet and thick with noble gases; many-faceted crystals spread below in a glittering carpet. It goes on for what seems like forever.

“Is this a real place?” Starscream asks, finally.

“I thought you’d like it,” Thundercracker says. “I spent a lot of time here. All three of us did.”

He pulls up another memory. Suddenly they’re chasing Skywarp around and around a crystal spire, up into the sky, Skywarp’s laughter ringing over the comms as they corkscrew through puffy clouds the color of expensive highgrade to burst up through the atmosphere and onto the edge of space. Gravity drags heavy as they break its grip; they float beneath the stars, the ground far, far away. Skywarp drifts on the atmosphere’s edge, bits of cloud still trailing from his wingtips.

“It’s beautiful,” Starscream says, wistfully. Then, “He looks so different. He’s as big as you.”

“We all did. We’d been through a few reformats by then.”

A third memory: downtime at the mining base, some inconsequential mealtime in the mess hall. Memory-Starscream is too absorbed in a datapad to notice Skywarp slipping a straw into Starscream’s cube and drinking the fuel straight from his unattended hand. It takes five full kliks before memory-Starscream goes to take a sip and finds it empty. He glares at them both but can’t prove anything.

The Starscream in Thundercracker’s arms laughs, shaky though it might be.

Thundercracker’s processor swirls with questions about what he’s seen in Starscream’s head: the pit, Six-of-Twelve, everything that came after. They don’t leave his lips. He can’t risk tipping Starscream back into that loop (he’s still making Ratchet run a defrag on him as soon as possible) but after a few kliks he wonders if there’s any point in asking questions at all; if details will solve anything. Is it better to box away the past and let it die? Is it shrapnel to be drawn out, or a knife stoppering a wound? Is it any different from Thundercracker putting away all the things he’s been and trying to be a better person? There was a time when he would’ve stepped on Marissa and Buster without a second thought, and now they’re some of the most important things he has.

Thundercracker senses it when Starscream goes poking around in his head again. He’s more careful this time. Little bits of memory flash by as Starscream touches on them, further and further back in the war. He doesn’t know what Starscream’s looking for; doesn’t even know why he picks the memories he does, until he realizes they all include Skywarp. The memories are nothing exciting: meetings, recon, the occasional light skirmish in which no one even gets grazed. Boring stuff. Starscream is rapt. Just—his trine alive.

All of them alive.

Thundercracker’s nearly dozing by the time Starscream pushes a memory of his own at him, tentative. He lets himself fall into it and finds himself in the raucous bustle of Maccadam’s a long, long time ago, watching Skywarp drunkenly attempt Rosanna’s _Square-Bottomed Mechs_ on the little stage at the back of the room. The crowd boos him good-naturedly. Skywarp makes a rude gesture and keeps on singing. He’s laughing as he does.

Thundercracker glimpses his reflection in the glass behind the bar and realizes he’s inhabiting Starscream. It takes his breath away: _Starscream_, whole, undamaged, young, his mouth a sharp grin and his wings two broad white sweeps tipped in red. He’s still in his first frame, the one that had come off the production line never fitting him quite right. The memory of Thundercracker stands to the left (that’s _still_ disorienting) sipping highgrade.

Starscream leans toward memory-Thundercracker and says, “Ten shanix that they throw him out before he gets to the third verse.”

“You’re on,” memory-Thundercracker says, and—

“Hey,” Thundercracker says, out loud. “I think I remember this.”

“You do?” Starscream asks.

This must have happened before their planetary histories diverged. Long ago, before the war, before the functionists consolidated power, when they were only newly trine and the future was infinite. Try as he might he can’t remember what they were celebrating, though he knows they were celebrating something; a good result in Vos’ cube finals? Had Starscream landed some contract? He guesses it doesn’t matter. It was so long ago.

“Yeah,” Thundercracker says. “Hang on a klik.”

The matching memory file is easy enough to dig up, once he pulls it out of deep storage. He layers it over Starscream’s own. Suddenly the memory is twice as vivid, sharp and bright, every detail clear as crystal, realer than real. Skywarp’s plating is so dazzling he can hardly look at it. The highgrade is smooth, but with a bite—at the time it was mid-shelf stuff barely worth mentioning, but now it aches. He hasn’t tasted engex like this since Vos fell. There’s a weird vibration as he’s _Starscream-and-Thundercracker_ at once—then his perspective snaps over, and he’s looking out from behind his own memory-eyes. Starscream looks back.

It’s as if they’re really there. As if everything that happened after this night was a terrible dream. It’s all-consuming, but in a different way than Starscream’s compressed memory. Thundercracker can feel every detail of the place from the slick cold film on his cube to the slight stickiness of the floor, and it’s easy to give himself over to the fragment of a place and time long vanished; he wonders if Maccadam’s still stands on New Cybertron, and if it’s anything like he remembers.

Skywarp gets tossed out on his skidplate in the middle of verse four, so Starscream owes him ten shanix. They get into a brawl over the injustice of it anyway and then they _all _get thrown out, and Starscream spends a while shouting imprecations about the state of the bouncers’ interfacing equipment while Skywarp finds his feet. They all have too much engex in them to be actually angry, though, so when Starscream gets bored they just kick off and fly home. The air above Iacon is cold and clear. It sobers Thundercracker up a little. Not so much Skywarp, who flies joyful loop-the-loops through the open sky.

[Did you see the look on his face when you called him a self-servicing insecticon fragger?] Skywarp cackles. [I thought he’d strangle you, Screamer!]

[He’d have to catch me first,] Starscream crows. [I am uncatch—uncatcha—very fast.]

[Very overcharged.]

[That too. It’s Thundercracker’s fault. He bet me ten shanix you’d get thrown out by verse three, so I had to finish the pitcher. It would’ve gone to waste otherwise.]

[I think I bet the opposite of that,] Thundercracker says, uncertainly.

[I don’t think you did! Hey, look, we’re home.]

_Home_ is a run-down aerie in Iacon’s northwest—once built to house Vosian royalty, now residence to down-on-their-luck students and cold constructs. A lot of the apartments have been broken up into individual rooms, but they’d snagged an original trine suite. No one had wanted it on account of the sheer drop from the attached flight balcony. They land in an uncoordinated sequence and Skywarp transforms almost on top of Starscream. They go down in a heap of limbs.

“Get off me, you oaf,” Starscream grumbles.

“Mm. Don’t want to.”

“You’re crushing me!”

“And what if I do this?”

“I don’t care what you do, you’ll still be crushing—_hh!_”

And the noise he makes—the little intake of air as Skywarp’s fingers slip into a gap between plating, and Skywarp’s laughter as he pushes even deeper and Starscream lets out a breathy little moan—Thundercracker had, uh, forgotten how this memory ended. Warmth suffuses his frame as Starscream drags Skywarp into a kiss. Both of their wings are tantalizingly within reach as they grope each other right there on the balcony, and Thundercracker finds himself reaching, finds himself running a hand along a black-and-purple angle as Skywarp arches against him, and looks down to find Starscream watching him in return.

It’s like ice-cold solvent dumped over him. He remembers where he is. _When_ he is. He tries to pull free but the doubled memory is sticky and hard to escape; he didn’t come into this looking for an overload. He can’t force this on Starscream—this sudden, total intimacy for a person he might have known a long time ago but doesn’t anymore. In the real world Starscream slumps against his cockpit, his optic softly flickering, his body limp and heavy. The cable connectors are right there by Thundercracker’s hand. He could pull free. He could force the end of the connection. But he doesn’t want to.

Maybe that makes him a bad person.

[Starscream,] he sends, reluctant to speak aloud even as the memory carries him along, as he puts his mouth to the back of Skywarp’s collar faring and charge rises in his system. [Is this—I mean, do you want—I can stop. We can stop.]

The response comes on a burst of hurt and quickly suppressed rejection. [You don’t want…]

[I don’t want to hurt you. This was only supposed to be memories.] He remembers Starscream saying _I can make it good_ and feels ill. Is this some kind of bribe? An obligation? Does he think Thundercracker wants payment? [You don’t need to do this.]

Under Skywarp, memory-Starscream tips his head back to allow him access to his neck cables. Skywarp bites at them. Thundercracker’s hands slip down to tease Starscream’s wings and he moans louder, ailerons fluttering.

[It can just be this,] Starscream pleads, all in a rush. [You don’t have to touch the real me. Let me have this, just for a little while.]

[You don’t want me to touch you?]

Starscream doesn’t answer that.

In the memory, Starscream shoves Skywarp off on the grounds that he’s scraping up his wings. They stumble inside to sprawl onto the recharge slab in the corner, and Thundercracker gets Starscream around the waist. He pulls him into his lap to kiss him soundly. Skywarp opens Starscream’s interface panel from behind and Thundercracker kisses him, too; he still tastes of sweet highgrade. Skywarp’s too clumsy to jack them all together and after a couple of failed tries Starscream plucks the cables from his hand. He daisy-chains them together, face to face to face, not sharing memories but pure physicality, every touch and bit of rising charge bounced each to each and amplified. That’s the thing grounders don’t understand about trines: sometimes it’s closer to being a gestalt than conjunxes. One person in three bodies, three sparks in one.

Starscream—the real Starscream—makes a soft, lost sound in Thundercracker’s arms. He knows how Starscream is: when it comes to affection, he's always been a desperate, hungry thing. Thundercracker runs his thumb through the gap at Starscream’s hip as memory-Thundercracker does the same thing and Starscream goes rigid in his arms. Thundercracker does it again, seeking out that particular wire Starscream has always liked.

It’s like a dam breaking. Starscream presses into his touch, clumsy claws wrapped around his back to drag him close. Thundercracker runs his hands over plating that hasn’t felt gentleness in vorns; he feels the oversensitized shock of it reflected through the interface—the disbelief, the inability to process touch not laced with contempt. When Thundercracker kisses the side of his empty helm, Starscream lets out a sob—just one, short and sharp. Thundercracker draws back, sure he’s made a mistake, that he’s overstepped—

“Please,” Starscream asks, “again.”

So he does.

He mouths his way up Starscream’s neck cables and onto the ones that should still be safely tucked away inside a head and aren’t; he plays with the lines in the gap of Starscream’s shoulder, strokes his plating, and feels the vibration as his fans kick on. Heat and charge gather. In memory he’s kissing Starscream’s hungry mouth, Skywarp panting against his neck, three sets of hands a tangle between them teasing wings and wires, all of them so deep in the bond it’s hard to tell where one of them ends and another begins. It all blends together: past and future, real and imagined. Thundercracker rubs his thumb over the base of Starscream’s wing stub and Starscream cries out. He arches in sudden, shocking overload. Thundercracker’s spark flares with it. For a moment there’s no separation between them, no sparks, no space, just light.

When they’re back in their own heads, it takes Thundercracker three tries to get his hands steady enough to unhook their cables and put them away. They tip sideways until they lie tangled on the narrow slab. For a long time they stay in the dark, holding one another. Thundercracker can’t help thinking of two other, unluckier seekers not so very far away. Strangely, he feels more at peace than he has at any point since the war ended.

When Thundercracker has nearly succumbed to recharge, Starscream asks, “Skywarp’s really still alive?”

“Alive and kicking,” Thundercracker promises, sleepily. “Can’t you feel him through the bond?”

“I don’t know. It’s so faint… Maybe I only want it to be true.”

“He’s there, just far away.” He sets his hand above Starscream’s spark chamber. There’s no way to feel it physically, but the bond pulses bright in return. Their third point is a distant pinprick of a thing, and even quantum entanglement can’t transmit information over this distance. All it does is exist on the edge of perception. “Way out there on Earth. Too far for feelings or communication, but he’s there, waiting. You’ll see him soon.”

“Do you think,” Starscream says, then stops. Anxiety seeps into the bond. Anxiety and… Shame? Both are quickly clamped down on, but Thundercracker isn’t about to let it fester.

“Do I think what?”

“That… That Skywarp will hate me for being… This?”

“For—no, of course not!” Thundercracker props himself up on an elbow to look down at Starscream. “Why would he?”

Starscream buries his helm against Thundercracker’s side. “Forget it.”

“Frames are just frames. We can get you a whole new one if you want, with all the bells and whistles. Or if this is about not living up to your other self…” Thundercracker hesitates. “You should know that we all hated each other by the end of the war. We were only just patching things up when—well. What I’m saying is, Skywarp might even like you better for not being him.”

Starscream makes a noncommittal noise.

“We’re getting out of here, Starscream,” Thundercracker tells him. “I’ll talk to Damus. He’ll help smuggle us to the spacebridge, and once we’re on the other side, we’ll never have to come back here again. You can have any new frame you want, and Skywarp will be there, and this whole planet can go smelt itself.”

Starscream doesn’t reply, just curls closer under the sheltering overhang of Thundercracker’s wing. He cuddles like he’d climb inside Thundercracker’s armor if he could; like he wants to wear the same frame.

He knows without having to ask that Starscream doesn’t really believe him.


	11. Chapter 11

Time passes strangely in the Sanctuary of Lower Iacon. Without access to the surface its inhabitants fall into idiosyncratic routines, daily schedules unbound by such small things as _day_, or _night_, or _business hours_. Swerve’s does a roaring trade at all points of the chronometer, though sometimes it’s a skinny gunformer named Aimless behind the bar instead of a squat red minibot. What shops exist open at irregular times, if they open at all. The only ones who stick to an upper-plates schedule are the ones who work there and return to Lower Iacon to live. Every one of them is menial: sweepers and maintenance and waste disposal. He wonders if those upper-plates mechs know how their employees are living. He wonders if they’d care if they did.

Thundercracker feels very lazy indeed lying around as his wing heals and Starscream gradually becomes less of a bedraggled mess; a few cycles of rest and good energon and the tremors go out of his claws. His nanite colonies expand far enough to qualify as _scruffy_ rather than _acid-washed._ Starscream sticks to him like glue whenever he leaves their quarters, glaring suspiciously at everyone they pass. It doesn’t win him any friends, but Lower Iacon has a certain tolerance for… Quirks. Starscream’s behavior is certainly no stranger than that of some other mechs in this place.

They interface more nights than not. It’s not even sex, mostly—only memory traded back and forth, images, bits of one another’s lives. It’s part of being trine. To work in sync they need to understand each other inside and out, backwards and forwards. There are still so many gaps in what they know about one another; thousands of vorns’ worth. He wonders if he’ll ever catch up. He doesn’t touch the crumbling mass of encryption in Starscream’s head again. Ratchet had cleaned it up as best as he was able (it’s no longer corrupting adjacent sectors, at least) but he’d told Starscream to get himself to a mnemosurgeon ASAP, or failing that, a therapist. Starscream had cursed him out. Ratchet had threatened to weld Starscream’s wrists to his skidplate. All in all, a productive cycle.

Thundercracker counts down to the spacebridge’s next opening in his head. He counts it in joors and energon cubes and status reports from his healing wing (true to Ratchet’s word, flightworthy but nowhere near elegant nor fit for combat maneuvers). Nearly a decacycle in, he emerges from recharge with Starscream in his arms and for a moment thinks he’s still dreaming; that it’s fifty thousand vorns ago and he’s late for his shift at the outlier research suite. That he’s on the _Nemesis,_ and as soon as Starscream wakes up he’ll kick him out of the berth to rush off to another strategy meeting. That it’s only the same wishful thinking he’s woken to so many times before, and in a moment he’ll find himself fully conscious, his arms empty.

But time runs on; Starscream persists. His wingless frame slots neatly between Thundercracker’s arm and the berth. They’re in the same dingy underground room where they’d slid into recharge, and as he looks at Starscream’s still form he can’t bring himself to move. Starscream’s optic is dark, his body relaxed. For the first time he seems something like peaceful. Thundercracker wishes he knew the names of every mech who’d ever hurt him, because he wants to hunt them down.

In some ways he and Starscream are more alike than he likes to admit.

They’d never disconnected their cables the night before. He feels Starscream dreaming still: nebulous splashes of color, fragments of memory. Nothing solid. As little as Thundercracker wants to disturb him, he can’t lie here forever. After ten kliks he disengages as gently as he can. Starscream doesn’t stir when he spools their cables back into their housings; when he climbs out of the berth, Starscream only curls into a tighter ball. He still seems so small without wings. Fragile, though he’d maul anyone who said so.

They’ve finally run out of energon. Thundercracker leaves their quarters in search of fuel, and of Damus, if he can find him. The undercity snakes all over Cybertron. There must be a way to reach the spacebridge without being seen.

It’s funny; Lower Iacon seems so much less ominous than it did when they’d arrived. Even the ossuary. Maybe he’s gotten used to it. Maybe it’s only that (healed and in one piece) he sees the place for what it is: a refuge carved out of a planet’s unwilling hide, full of the lonely and the lost. The last resort for a world that would gladly see the Sanctuary and everyone in it shoved into the smelter it used to be.

Swerve is happy to see him, as always (probably because no one’s thought to deactivate Thundercracker’s credit account yet), so Thundercracker buys a cube of nice midgrade each for himself and Starscream and drinks his at the bar, relishing the taste. The solar-refined energon on Earth is fine enough, but can’t compare to the crystals grown and mined from Cybertron’s crust.

“Have you seen Damus around?” Thundercracker asks him.

“He’s probably at services,” Swerve answers. “Usually they’re held in the audience hall, but you know the electrical problems we’ve been having. Did you want a dusting of bismuth on that?”

“Please.” Thundercracker holds out his cube. Swerve grates a block of rainbow metal into sprinkles. They sink through the energon, glittering multi-colored and reflecting the light. “_Services?_ I didn’t take him for the _mercy-of-Primus_ type. Or is he a spectralist?”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that. It’s more of a, uh, how do I put this? A self-help thing. _No gods, no masters, take control of your own destiny_… It’s a little woo-woo for my tastes, but hey, whatever gets you through the cycle. Between you and me, I don’t think he knows what to do with himself ever since the _Last Light_ went up to fight without him. But someone needed to stay and oversee the town, so…”

_Last Light? _Wasn’t it_ Lost Light?_ Then Thundercracker remembers: quantum duplicates, alternate universes, _Megatron_. The same ship twice over, two different names. He’s gotten the sense that Lower Iacon was some sort of resistance hub before the functionists came crashing down, but… “Megatron left him behind?”

“I think Damus sees it that way, even if he’ll tell you he doesn’t.” Swerve leans on the bar, conspiratorial. “The thing about Damus is, he’s a romantic at heart. He had big ideas about proving himself, but look at the mech. He’s a great administrator—he takes unholy joy in paperwork—but he wouldn’t last a second in combat and Megatron knew it. Even then I expect Damus thought he could hand things over to Megatron with a bow on top when he came back. Then came the trial, and here’s Damus still working away… Poor fragger. You couldn’t pay me enough to keep Lower Iacon running. It’s a miracle Damus keeps anyone in line, but he’s always been a smooth talker.”

Thundercracker (having never had much ambition to be in charge of anything) privately agrees. The Decepticons were fractious enough, and that was with the ever-present threat of the DJD hanging over their heads if they ever drifted too far astray. That or the destroying burn of a fusion cannon. Keeping Lower Iacon running even semi-smoothly must be a full-time job.

When he looks up from his drink he finds Swerve watching him. Watching his wings, more precisely. Thundercracker meets Swerve’s optic and raises one slow brow.

Swerve puts his hands in the air innocently. “I’m not ogling, I just wanted to see how the fix is doing. I mixed the alloy for Ratchet. Custom job. Flight-grade plate filler isn’t exactly in plentiful supply these days.”

Thundercracker takes a moment to be deeply concerned for his wing’s structural integrity, constructed apparently by a mech who spends most of his cycles pouring nothing more complicated than fancy engex. “You… Mixed it?”

“I know, right? Here’s me running a bar, what does _Swerve_ know about wings—but I used to be a metallurgist like a zillion vorns ago. Then, well, _You’re a minibot, it’s inappropriate, there goes the face_—you know the drill. Now I only get to cast something when Damus needs it. Which has been more often lately, to be fair.” Swerve’s optic flattens into a self-deprecating downward curve. “At least they let me keep my hands, and if Lower Iacon is anything, at least it isn’t lonely. I can still mix a mean Adaptica Stunner. Your conjunx wasn’t so lucky.”

Thundercracker’s about to say _He’s not my conjunx _for the hundredth time, but honestly it’s too much trouble. Sure, whatever. Starscream’s his conjunx now. “New Cybertron is fragged, you know? I thought my Cybertron was bad, but at least all the bad was out in the open. This place is just paint on rust.”

“I mean... Your Cybertron doesn’t even exist anymore, so…”

Thundercracker drains his cube in a swig, mood soured. All the enjoyment’s gone out of it. He barely tastes the sprinkles. It’s just another reminder that there’s no universe in which Cybertron went _right_—after the long, slow death of the original, the appearance of a thriving double had seemed like Primus’ gift. It seems like a betrayal that it’s rotten to the core. A warped mirror—the sort of wish granted by Earth’s mythical desert spirits (Jennies? Janets?), everything you ever wanted handed over bent and wrong. Somewhere, Mortilus is laughing at him.

“I can’t wait to get off this planet,” Thundercracker grumbles.

Swerve fumbles a glass and nearly drops it. “Wait, what? You’re leaving? But what about—you can’t leave me hanging, Thundercracker! Ratchet and me were working for cycles! Damus asked especially and Ratchet took some convincing, but you know me, always happy to help! And it was a challenge, too. All we had were these Golden Age blueprints and those are always to weird tolerances and the proportions weren’t really written down because they were all proprietary so I had to mix the alloys by feel while Ratchet wired the sensor suite—”

“_Swerve_,” Thundercracker interrupts, breaking into the barrage of words. “_What_ are you talking about?”

Swerve freezes_._ “You don’t know?”

Thundercracker shakes his head.

Swerve buries his helm in his hands. “Oh slag. You _don’t _know. It was supposed to be a surprise, wasn’t it? And I ruined it! _Please_ don’t tell Damus I said anything. Me and my big stupid mouth! I can’t believe I blurted out that we built Starscream new wings—” Swerve’s optic contracts to a pinprick. He slaps his hands to the place his mouth should be, which does nothing to muffle his voice. “_Frag!_”

It takes half a joor to calm Swerve down. At least three quarters of it is Thundercracker trying to get a word in edgewise while Swerve babbles about wires, the melting point of palladium, technical specifications, Damus’ disappointment, and (for some reason) _As the Kitchen Sinks_, which apparently he’d gotten hooked on when the soap opera was exported from Earth. Never mind metallurgy or being a minibot—Thundercracker’s pretty sure the functionists cut off Swerve’s face to stop him talking, only it didn’t work.

_New wings_. Thundercracker sets out to find Damus, processor spinning with the generosity of the gift. Wings are expensive, specialty pieces of equipment. It doesn’t take more than a glance at Lower Iacon to see they aren’t rolling in shanix. What little professional help they have comes in the form of people like Ratchet—_charity_, because Ratchet’s enough of a bleeding spark that he probably can’t stand to think of the mechs dying under his feet as he realigns senators’ aching gears in the shiny hospitals above. Meanwhile Lower Iacon can barely keep the lights on. He only gets lost twice as he hunts Damus down—his mysterious _services_ are no doubt long over_—_but it’s still a relief to catch the echo of Damus’ voice from up ahead.

“—Better to fix the problem before it spreads,” Damus is telling someone. “It can’t fail now. It’s too important.”

“We can’t keep doing this forever,” a rough-edged voice answers. “It’s entropy, boss. This place is old. Like, _old_. I fixed up the lower relays like you wanted, but every time we light a furnace it cascades and blows out something else. This place was suited for high voltage a few thousand vorns ago, but now? Not so much.”

“It doesn’t need to last forever, just long enough. I can only push the schedule so far, and even if everything goes according to plan—I can’t surrender Lower Iacon to the scraplets and enforcers, Amp. I won’t. We’ll just need to keep replacing the arrays as they short.”

Thundercracker comes around the corner, sure to walk loudly enough that he doesn’t seem like he was eavesdropping. The mech with Damus is skinny and red, his chest one massive turbine, twin discharge coils mounted on his shoulders. He doesn’t look up from the open panel in the wall, nor the section of scorched wiring and blown fuses he’s replacing piece by piece. Damus stares into the cavity with his arms crossed and the body language of long suffering. Thundercracker thinks of furnaces and electricity and money and remembers saying _Not unless you can magic his wings back,_ and feels a little worse for having inadvertently made the request.

“As Megatron said, you fight a war with the ships you have, not the ones you desire,” Damus mutters to himself, as if it’s a mantra. He seems to notice Thundercracker halfway through. His head jerks up, startled. “Thundercracker? I didn’t see you there.”

Thundercracker waves, unsure where to begin. “Um. Hi. Can we talk?”

The mech half in the wall—Amp—straightens. Thundercracker nearly recoils. He’s… Whatever’s the opposite of an empuratee. He still has his hands and face but his optics are two black pits, glass and workings absent as if scooped clean out. Amp’s head turns to track him like he can see just fine, which is _creepy as slag_. Something itches at the back of Thundercracker’s processor, some elusive familiarity he can’t quite place; he doesn’t know anyone named Amp but he could swear they’ve met, if he could just find the right memory—

“Certainly, Thundercracker,” Damus interrupts Thundercracker’s racing thoughts. “Do you mind if we walk and talk? It’s only that I’m on a schedule, you see, and the list of things that need doing in Lower Iacon never really gets shorter.”

“Sure.” It’s only though monumental effort that Thundercracker neither stares at Amp’s creepy not-optics nor looks away. “I’ll follow you.”

Damus sets off at a trot. Thundercracker hurries after. He cranes his neck to look back but Amp has already returned to work, little of him visible but his legs and the tips of his coils. Memory nags at him again, something about the shape of his kibble, the crest of his helm...

“Don’t mind Amp,” Damus tells him. “He doesn’t say much, and I admit the optics are something to get used to, but he’s a good mech. We’d barely have an electrical grid at all if not for him. He’s like your Starscream—cold constructed. The only other left, perhaps. When the purge began, well…”

Thundercracker stares. There can’t be _two_ cold constructed mechs with undying sparks. It strains credibility. “How did he survive?”

“The same way he lost his optics. Amp was built to serve as a generator for this very facility: him and a hundred others. He’s made to withstand voltage that would kill you or I. When the council initiated the mode recall and triggered his obsolescence chip he went down fighting. He half fried himself doing it, but it short-circuited the chip.”

“And he never, uh, replaced…”

“Oh, no. They’d started building remote cameras into all the new optics by then.”

Thundercracker bleakly remembers his earlier metaphor, _paint on rust, _and reflects that there is always more and it is always worse. He tries to erase the idea of having involuntary surveillance implanted in his helm but knows it will figure in some future nightmare. New Cybertron is a manifestation of the pit itself, he’s certain of it.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Damus asks, breaking him from his reverie.

Thundercracker debates asking at all. Maybe it’s better to pretend he never heard anything, but he’s never been good at keeping secrets. “Originally I was going to ask about the best route to the spacebridge, but—”

Damus halts so quickly that Thundercracker travels a further two strides without him. “You’re leaving?”

“That was the plan, but—look, don’t be mad at Swerve, but he kind of spilled the bearings on your little surprise? And don’t get me wrong, it’s really nice of you, but are you sure you have the resources to be forging wings? I know it isn’t easy or cheap between power and materials, especially for retrofitting onto an existing frame, and going to that kind of expense… I’d say I’d pay you back but I’m pretty sure customs won’t be exchanging my dollars for shanix again anytime soon—”

“Thundercracker!” Damus puts up his pincers to stop Thundercracker’s babbling. Maybe Swerve is contagious. “Your concern is touching, really, but we’re not as helpless as you seem to think. Though it _is_ a shame the surprise was ruined. Swerve and I will be having _words._”

Thundercracker winces. “It wasn’t his fault. He thought I already knew.”

“Still.” Damus looks sorely annoyed with Swerve, pincers clenched, his optic an icy line—then he cycles his vents, shakes his head, and only looks resigned. “I suppose it will still be a surprise to Starscream, which is the important thing. It’s traumatic enough losing a limb for something less functional. I can only imagine what it is to live with a third of them missing entirely.”

Thundercracker’s wings twitch at the thought of losing his own. Half a seeker’s neural net is encased within them, sensitive to every air current and eddy. They’re necessary to the kind of high-speed aerial grace that makes them such efficient killers. As far as he knows ground sickness is an urban legend, but his spark tightens at the idea of being grounded forever. Suddenly he feels all the weight of Primax pressing down upon him, all the towers and people. He can only imagine what it’s been like for Starscream for all these vorns upon vorns, not even able to register a breeze across his ailerons.

“We can of course discuss routes to the spacebridge, but are you certain now is the best time?” Damus asks. “Even if we attach Starscream’s wings right away, there will be a recovery period. The welds need to settle, not to mention your own injuries. You still aren’t operating at a hundred percent. Primus forbid the enforcers stumble upon you while you aren’t at your best! Do you really want to fight them damaged? Starscream would be defenseless. Just imagine if they captured him. If you try to leave too soon, Thundercracker, **_things could go very badly for you indeed_**.”

Thundercracker’s spark hurts.

It isn’t like when he first encountered Starscream. It’s something deeper, duller. He puts a hand to his cockpit anyway. Maybe it’s just Damus’ words sinking in. They’d had a bad enough time with the enforcers on the first go-round (if they meet again, Thundercracker’s tempted to shoot Barricade just on principle). He’d like to be back on Earth as soon as possible, but can he risk Starscream’s safety just to escape a few cycles early? It would be just as easy to wait until they were both healed and functional. And he very much does want to give Starscream his wings back. Especially when Swerve, Ratchet and Damus have gone to so much trouble in replacing them. It would be a waste to leave that behind, wouldn’t it? More than that, it would be ungrateful. Doesn’t he owe Damus this?

What’s the harm in staying just a little longer? The spacebridge isn’t going anywhere.

“Maybe you’re right,” Thundercracker says, reluctantly.

The pressure on Thundercracker’s spark eases. Damus smiles an empuratee’s smile, an upward half-moon of optic showing. He pats Thundercracker on the hip, his tiny chassis barely of a height with Thundercracker’s ventral air intakes. Thundercracker is suddenly overcome with wondering what happened to that other Damus on another world, the one who disappeared. He’d never even thought about it, really. Never thought about him. He feels guilty for it now.

“Of course I’m right,” Damus says. “I’m sure Starscream will feel much more like himself once he has his wings back, don’t you think? Practically brand new.”

Damus insists on being to one to tell Starscream about the wings, but he can’t do it like a normal person. No, he makes Thundercracker lure Starscream back to Ratchet’s clinic (no easy feat without an explanation at hand, especially after the last time) and into the back room with his optic turned off. Starscream’s claw clamps so hard on Thundercracker’s hand it hurts, but he doesn’t let go.  The wings are the first thing on display as they walk into Ratchet’s private workshop: two pale, red-tipped sweeps straight out of the golden age, not quite a style Starscream ever wore; he always preferred straight edges. They’re still familiar enough to stop Thundercracker’s ventilation system.

“Starscream, I—” Damus begins.

It’s as far as he gets before Starscream’s optic onlines against orders, and though Damus keeps talking, Thundercracker doubts Starscream hears a word.

Ratchet doesn’t let Damus stay for the installation. There isn’t enough room. He only barely lets Thundercracker stand in the corner and watch, on account of they’re trine. Even when Starscream drops into stasis and would know no differently if he left, Thundercracker stays. The surgical bay is cramped with all three of them, but there’s enough space to keep himself out of the way as Ratchet opens up Starscream’s back and rewires him. Thundercracker tries not to study his innards too closely. The remnants of Starscream’s old hookups are a mess, connections clipped and snapped and crudely welded.

Ratchet makes a noise of professional disgust. “Look at the state of this. It wasn’t even good when it was new. Those butchers on the cog never had any idea what they were doing, and they didn’t care, either. It’s for the best most of them were still on it when it went down.” He peels a corroded length of wire from Starscream’s spinal strut, makes a face, and discards it. “If I never have to see their sloppy handiwork again, it’ll be too soon.”

He doesn’t mention the scarring around those clipped connections, nor how it must have gotten there. Neither does he mention the extent of the damage to Starscream’s protoform: much more than would result from one surgery or even a dozen. What would be the point? They both know the council was staffed by monsters. Surely Ratchet’s seen enough horrors of his own, above Cybertron’s crust and below. After a while they blend into one another, all flavors of the same thing; numbness is both a curse and a blessing.

Thundercracker has never known Ratchet well, but as Autobot CMO he’d had a reputation for strong opinions. It can’t have been encouraged under functionist rule. Frankly, he’s surprised Ratchet survived their regime at all. Maybe he’s just good enough with his hands that they were reluctant to cut them off.

“Why are you doing this?” Thundercracker asks, impulsively.

“Why do you think? Because it’s my job. Because Damus gets what Damus wants, and frankly this is a nice change from flushing the systems of booster addicts. These wings won’t attach themselves.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” Thundercracker waves at the cramped surgical suite and Lower Iacon itself. “Why this? You’re a good doctor. Like, _really_ good. You could run the whole health system up top and instead you’re down here fixing rust infections in a hole in the ground. Mostly I’m surprised they let you. Even with the council gone you can’t tell me Primax would like anything better than for Lower Iacon to die off quietly.”

“You’re right about that much.”

“So why?”

“Sometimes I wonder that myself.” Ratchet doesn’t look up from the tangle of wires spreading plantlike from Starscream’s splayed-open plating. “I never used to pay much attention to what was happening under my feet, you know. A few thousand vorns ago I had a clinic in Rodion, but after they centralized everything, there never seemed to be time. I worked in the big fancy hospitals up above and I got complacent. Then…” Ratchet’s hands still for a moment; barely there, invisible if Thundercracker hadn’t been watching so closely. His head stays bent over his work. “His name was Pharma.”

Thundercracker knows that name. It takes a moment for him to place it: an Autobot medic known to be skilled, though not quite so skilled as Ratchet. Megatron had listed him as capture-not-kill. Last Thundercracker had heard, he’d been posted on some frozen backwater mining outpost.

He’d also been a jet.

“I’m sorry,” Thundercracker says.

Ratchet shakes his head. “He disappeared with the rest of the flightframes. He knew they were out of favor with the council, but he’d won altmode exemption for saving a senator’s life vorns and vorns ago. He was so sure it wouldn’t happen to him;  that he was forged, that he was important, that he knew the right people… And they killed him anyway. It never mattered.” He pries a long strip of insulation from Starscream’s back and sets it aside, leaving a cavity that exposes the raw inner core of his wings’ mounting stubs. “I assume they killed him. They must have. One day he was there and the next he was gone. I looked, but I never saw him again. I think Pharma knew, in those last days: something was in the wind. He asked me to leave the planet with him and I didn’t listen. Said I couldn’t abandon my patients, so he didn’t go. It was the last thing I ever said to him—sorry, give me a moment. My hands aren’t what they used to be.”

Ratchet lifts his energon-spattered hands from Starscream and sets them flat on the table. He flexes the joints by force. In this light the scuffs and scrapes on his fingers are obvious, not at all the manicured digits of an upper-plates mech slumming but a laborer’s hands; hands which have seen hard use. Thundercracker is silent. What is there to say?

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Ratchet adds, after a moment. “Maybe just because you’d understand. Maybe Starscream reminds me of him, a little. I searched every inch of that horror show Damus calls an ossuary and didn’t find a sign of him. Not a single fleck of paint. Part of me hopes he isn’t there at all—that he isn’t anywhere. That he slipped away without me and went on living on some other planet.” He looks away. “I’ve heard a lot about what Megatron did on your Cybertron, but here… I’m not sure any of us would still be alive without him.”

They don’t talk after that.  Megatron’s legacy is a strange one: tyrant and liberator, savior and monster. He’s been all these things at once and in succession. Maybe there’s poetry in it: a hero may live long enough to see himself become the villain and endure the crippling regret of it enough to change again—but, change or not, there’s no escaping the past. Megatron’s caught up with him, no matter how long it took. The Galactic Council gave him the choice of outright execution or lifelong imprisonment in a mobius generator in Garrus-10: no sensation, no distraction, just infinite existence forever and ever until the last shred of heat in the universe dies away.

Thundercracker knows which he would have chosen.

He sits and thinks while Ratchet installs the delicate internal work. He’s forced out of the room when Flatline arrives to help mount the wings and make the neural connections. Then it’s a lot of welding and rivets, and it’s a good thing he’s long since lost all his medical squeamishness. It seems like no time at all before Starscream is fully assembled. He lies perfectly still on the medical slab, optic dark, a shape waiting to become a person. He seems _whole_ in a way he hadn’t before—as if the head and hands hardly matter next to the white angles of his wings. As if he’s come into sharp focus. Now there’s no mistaking him.

Predictably, the first thing Starscream does when he comes online is make a beeline for the nearest mirror. He  turns this way and that, angling his wings so the light bounces off them. He puts every piece through pre-flight checks over and over as if only to feel them move. Ratchet grumbles about flightframe vanity, but Ratchet grumbles about everything. Thundercracker notices how he tenses when he catches Starscream out of the corner of an optic.

He wonders what color Pharma’s wings were.

It’s strange to think of the universe’s two wildly diverging paths; what stayed the same and what didn’t, the ones who survived and the ones who never existed. He’s noticed the people who are missing here, but New Cybertron is home to millions he’s never heard of: people lost along the way in the throes of civil war. For a moment the world seems so full of ghosts there’s no room for anything else.


	12. Chapter 12

The spacebridge opens without them. It closes. Neither of them heeds it. Starscream is too enamored with his brand new wings to care that they’re stuck underground for another while. They need that long for his welds to solidify, anyway. It’s nothing like getting a full frame refit during the war, new parts slapped on and called _good enough_ before being tossed right back into battle. Thundercracker had done a double-take at Ratchet’s recovery time estimate (he’s seen Starscream pieced together from scrap more than once), but between frame starvation, atrophied neural linkups and his general poor state, it’s only a wonder it won’t take longer.

Starscream hasn’t had wings in… Thundercracker doesn’t want to guess how long. His mounting stubs are desensitized with exposure, their fine circuitry so long unused his frame has repurposed half of it. Even once the repair nanites settle, it will be a slow road to aerial stunts under an open sky.

In the meantime Starscream makes a spectacle of himself in the halls and passages of Lower Iacon, bumping into people, knocking things over, and blocking the way with wings that take up too much space for the sanctuary’s cramped walls to comfortably hold. He keeps startling himself with them like he forgets they’re there. It would be funny if it didn’t twist Thundercracker’s spark.

It’s after an incident involving a ladder, a bucket of paint and Starscream that Thundercracker decides he can’t let Starscream out unsupervised—at least not until he remembers where his limbs are at all times. He’d had to do a lot of apologizing followed by a lot of scrubbing half-hardened enamel in their quarters’ tiny washrack. So far the scrubbing is the harder task.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Starscream sulks. “They shouldn’t have put a ladder there.”

“Where else should they have put it?” Thundercracker asks, exasperated, as he peels splatters of muddy yellow from Starscream’s chassis. “If you hadn’t turned around so fast—”

“Oh, so I should have let that truck hit me?”

“He was a street sweeper and he would’ve bounced off. He was half your size.”

Starscream sniffs haughty dismissal, somewhat marred by the yellow goop softening under the solvent spray. He looks like he was rolling in toxic waste. At least the paint is coming off. Thundercracker couldn’t stand to see those brand new wings ruined so quickly.

“You’re getting a reputation, you know,” Thundercracker tells him, as he picks paint from a seam. “Half of Lower Iacon thinks you’re feral.”

“Good. Maybe they’ll stay away.”

“Starscream.” Thundercracker sighs, exasperated. “You could try just a little bit. It isn’t all bad. Swerve is nice. Damus is nice.”

“Damus is a little weirdo. Swerve I’ll give you. He has the highgrade.”

Half is better than nothing. As important as trine is, it can’t be everything. Seekers are social creatures. They get strange without contact, even with a trine to fall back on. Starscream has always been… Eccentric, to put it mildly, but he needs more people around him than just Thundercracker. He has to exist in the world, not cling like a shadow. He thinks it would help to get Starscream out among other mechs, but so far that’s been an uphill battle made worse by Starscream’s physical awkwardness.

Starscream has always been graceful. Though he’d never admit it, his new clumsiness must burn.

“Why don’t we go to Swerve’s, then?” Thundercracker asks. “It’s game night, and Swerve got in a shipment of those fancy curly straws you like.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“_People_ will be there.”

“That’s sort of the point, Starscream. It’s what a bar’s for. Look, we’ll go, we’ll have a drink, and if you hate it, we’ll leave.”

Starscream scowls, which is quite a feat without a mouth.

“Please?” Thundercracker asks. He gives Starscream his best puppy eyes, the ones he learned from Buster. “For me?”

_Starscream-before-the-war_ would never have missed a party and the chance to be the center of attention. _Air Commander Starscream _would’ve grunted something vague and gone back to plotting to blow a hole through Megatron’s spark. _Emperor Perpetua_ _Starscream_ was far too busy for such small things as drinking with his trinemates, except if he needed a favour.

The Starscream in front of Thundercracker tenses under his hands, then relaxes.

“You can show off your wings,” Thundercracker tells him.

“Fine,” Starscream says. “But only because you asked nicely.”

Predictably, Starscream is tense as a wound spring the moment they’re through the door. His helm darts this way and that, assessing threats—minibots and rusty laser pointers, mostly, but Starscream can be hypervigilant if it makes him feel better. Thundercracker steers him toward the bar before he can start a fight. It’s a role he’s played before. When he reaches it, he runs a few threat assessments of his own, picks a seat, and pulls Starscream into his lap.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Starscream wriggles, but not very hard. “We’re in public.”

“I can’t touch my trinemate in public?”

“You—I—I guess I can’t _stop_ you,” Starscream says, and looks away. Flustering him is as good as a distraction. At least it’s taken his attention off the minibots, though they’re attracting some attention of their own with this display. It can’t be often (or ever) that Lower Iacon sees two flightframes canoodling. After a klik Starscream mutters, “There are too many people here. It isn’t safe.”

“You’re fine, Starscream. I’m here. What are they gonna do, beat on your shins?”

Swerve leaves off serving a transport vehicle down by the end of the bar and wanders over. “Hey, if it isn’t my favorite seekers! What’ll you have?”

“We’re the only seekers you know,” Starscream says, snippily.

“Two highgrades, heavy on the octanes,” Thundercracker tells him. Something occurs to him, and he adds, “Wait, do you have any, uh, I can’t remember what they called it. They used to make it in Vos, bright orange, served it in little shot glasses… No, not Vos, I guess. What did they rename Vos? Vectrex?”

“You don’t mean _zip fuel_, do you?” Swerve asks. “That stuff is horrible for you, you know. It’ll burn a hole in your tanks. They stopped making it decavorns ago.”

“Oh.” Thundercracker wilts. One of the few things he’d hoped might have survived here and they don’t even manufacture it anymore. And sure, Swerve’s right (zip is horrible for you, leaves weird residue in your filters, and is mostly boranes) but he’d _liked_ it, slag it all. “I guess that makes sense. It was only ever popular in Vos. Rumble stole some of mine once and he was bouncing off the walls for three cycles and moaning about his aching tanks for twice that. Soundwave made me re-rivet the hull by hand.”

“I said they stopped _making_ it.” Swerve rummages beneath the bar and comes up with a dusty bottle, label faded, contents glowing virulent orange even after all this time. “I never said I didn’t have any.”

“Conjunx me, Swerve.”

“As if I could compete with the beauty in your lap,” Swerve teases. He pours their highgrade first—two cubes, plus a fancy straw for Starscream—then a shot glass each of zip. The fuel is just as neon as Thundercracker remembers. The fumes make him reset his optical sensors. Swerve frowns. “Maybe it’s no good.”

“Nah, zip’s just like that.”

“Well… It’s your poison.”

Starscream glares at the cube in front of him, then at Swerve. He hooks his cube in his claw, drags it closer, pops the straw into his intake and holds his drink in a protective embrace. It’s subtle, but Thundercracker thinks Swerve’s just been added to the short list of people Starscream wouldn’t gut if pressed.

Thundercracker keeps Starscream firmly in his lap as the evening wears on and the bar fills. As Starscream grows more and more tense with every raised voice, every bit of raucous laughter. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to bring him here so soon, but Starscream can’t stay holed up in a room for the rest of his life. He knows from experience that it will end badly, transmuting self-protection into another kind of despair.

The years he’d spent injured on Earth doing nothing but binge-watching human television had not exactly been healthy. If not for Bumblebee and Marissa, he might never have pulled himself out of that hole.

Thundercracker sets a hand on the twitching flat of Starscream’s wing, his thumb pressed to the seam where it joins Starscream’s back. He rubs a soothing circle into the metal. “It’s fine, Starscream. Nothing bad will happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

He doesn’t miss the way Starscream leans into his touch, or how his wingtips dip low as tension bleeds out of his frame. Expressive things, wings. Starscream will need to learn to hide his moods all over again—not that there’s ever much room for mistaking Starscream’s mood. Emotionally subtle he is not.

“I promise, if we ever run up against Decanter’s goons again it’s weapons free,” Thundercracker says. “I don’t care if I never come back to this stupid planet.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Swerve says. “New Cybertron isn’t that bad.”

Starscream takes a resentful swallow of his highgrade. “You’re an empuratee running a bar in a hole in the ground.”

Swerve winces. “Fair. But ouch.”

Thundercracker doodles with a fingertip on his cube’s condensation. “You should petition for relocation to Earth, Swerve. You all should. All of Lower Iacon. I don’t know if we have an actual process for refugee claims yet, but it has to be better than this. Pit, we could use some good bars, anyway.”

“That dirt planet? I mean… I wouldn’t know anyone there. Lower Iacon is my home. Shouldn’t I at least try to make it better?”

“It’s up to you. You sure don’t owe it anything.”

“I don’t know. It feels like running away. Especially after all that work Megatron did overthrowing the council and getting their feet off our necks. And it’s not like my life on New Cybertron has been _great_, but it’s the only one I know.” Swerve tops up Thundercracker’s shot glass. “It still feels weird saying it like that. _New Cybertron_. There’s nothing new about it, unless you count the council reformatting the whole fragging planet into a weapon to punch other, heretical planets. Now that was a ride I never want to take again. Thank you again, Megatron, for slagging those wingnuts.”

Starscream squints at Swerve, his optic distinctly fuzzier after several rounds of drinks. “That didn’t actually happen. Wait, _did_ that actually happen?”

“What, you didn’t notice? Frag yes it did! It was terrifying! Hey—do you think that means the planet’s sentient now if they turned it mech-shaped? Or maybe it was always sentient. Did they reformat it or did they just figure out how to trigger its transformation sequence and said, _Hey, go punch those other planets in the face?_ How would you even talk to a thing like that? You’d need a cityspeaker. A _planetspeaker_. It’d be worse than talking to a titan! Have you ever? Done that, I mean. They’re totally incomprehensible, and that’s before the council locked them all into altmode.” Swerve’s optic goes huge and round. “Do you think the planet is _Primus?_”

Thundercracker, who was listening to maybe half of that, says, “No, that’s ridiculous.”

Starscream stares hard at his drink. “Out of curiosity, did the whole universe go fragging insane when I wasn’t looking?” 

By the time they leave Swerve’s, Starscream is weaving on his feet and has lost complete control of his wings. He’s smacked at least three people in the face and nearly started a fight when someone took exception to it. He seems more himself than he’d been in a very long time, and if Thundercracker had known all it would take is getting him tanked on caustic, slightly expired Vosian rotgut he’d have done it a lot sooner.

“And I said… And I told him you can’t play it that way or it makes no sense. You know what he said to me?” Starscream complains, as they meander down the dim corridors of Lower Iacon. “He said: _that’s how it is, those are the rules in Adaptica!_ And I said that’s stupid, it’s a, it’s—it’s a Kalisian game. And he said, Adaptica _is_ Kalis! When did they change it? Kalis is Kalis, not Adaptica! They can’t just go around changing city names!”

“I know, Starscream. I was there.”

Starscream had spent the last fifteen kliks in increasingly heated conversation with some motorbike about the proper way to gamble on two-snap. Thundercracker hadn’t even known he played, much less that he cared about the minutiae of the rules.

“Adaptica is a stupid name,” Starscream says.

“You’re right. It is.”

“And Vectrex. And Primax. And—whatever the rest of them are. It’s all stupid! What did they do when they ran out of primes? Tell me there’s no _Sentinelon_ or _Sentihex_ out there.”

“Sentinus, actually,” Thundercracker says. “It used to be Gygax.”

Starscream groans and throws his head back. They pass Amp chest-deep in another blown junction box; Amp pulls his opticless helm from it to watch them pass, and Thundercracker steers Starscream around him. Electricity and wings seem like a bad mix.

“It even sounds ugly,” Starscream complains, weaving further down the corridor. “Functionists ruin everything. They don’t want warframes, don’t want datasticks, just drudges and transport and centr—centrif—lab equipment. That’s boring. Isn’t it boring?”

“Yep.”

Starscream turns on his heel so quickly he nearly overbalances, barely compensating for the sweep of his wings. He plants himself in the middle of the hall. “I want to go flying. Let’s go flying, Thundercracker.”

“Mm,” Thundercracker says doubtfully. He’s had a lot of practice protoform-sitting an overcharged Skywarp and is master-level in redirecting stupid ideas. “You’re still recovering. Do you want your new wings to fall off? Do you want Ratchet to have to fix them again?”

“It will be fine.” Starscream—far more stubborn than Skywarp at his worst—refuses to be dissuaded. He wiggles his ailerons. “It’s been cycles. They’re solid. If they didn’t fall off when that truck walked into me, it won’t be a problem.”

That isn’t what happened at all, but okay. “You got paint on you and you cried.”

“Well it slagging hurt! Anyway, they’re good enough to hold me. It will work.”

“Starscream, _we’re underground_.”

Thundercracker doesn’t know how it’s possible to pout with no lips, but Starscream manages. It’s something to do with the shape of his optic, and the way he looks up at Thundercracker as if saying _no_ would break his spark. Thundercracker feels himself weakening and hates himself for it. He’s not that easy, is he?

Starscream is right, at least, in that his welds will hold. They’ve outdistanced Ratchet’s waiting period. That doesn’t mean he isn’t leery of letting Starscream go too far too fast. He has a history of not giving a frag about his own endurance, and the last thing Thundercracker wants is for him to hurt himself.

Starscream’s optic is round and soft, his voice pleading. “Please, Thundercracker? I haven’t flown in so long.”

Knowing it’s bald-faced manipulation doesn’t actually help. Not when it’s true. Not when he’d felt the echo of Starscream’s sky-hunger when they’d interfaced. He can only imagines the long vorns ground-bound, never knowing if he’d feel the touch of air on wings again.

“I’m not taking you up to the surface,” Thundercracker says. “It’s too dangerous. If the enforcers saw us…”

“What about that big room? The hangar or whatever? There’s enough space for a tight loop.”

_The charnel pit?_ Try as he might, Thundercracker can’t help but think of it that way. Some stains don’t wash clean. Starscream’s right, at least, about one thing: the room is huge. Not enough to get up any real speed, but more than enough for a few lazy low-powered circles. Which might be just about perfect, come to think of it. It could even do some good for the neural integration of Starscream's wings.

“I don’t know,” Thundercracker says, reluctantly. “Damus might not like it.”

“And you’ll let some little orange whatever-he-is tell you what to do? Don’t tell me the functionists made _you _boring, too.”

Starscream waltzes off in the direction of the charnel pit before Thundercracker can say another word. Thundercracker hurries after him. “Do I have to remind you that you’re drunk? Can’t you do this next cycle?”

“The day I can’t fly drunk is the day they haul me in for scrap.” Starscream wrenches the charnel pit’s massive door open. It slides only a bit before sticking, but it’s more than enough. The pit is as dark as ever, vast and impenetrable. It’s like being back at the bottom of Earth’s ocean. Starscream laughs. It echoes weirdly in the vaulted space. “I guess they already did that. Come on, Thundercracker. Last one in the air is a meal for the scraplets!”

Starscream transforms and jets into the dark. Thundercracker can see him only by his biolights. Optics are useless in the black, but instrumentation is more than enough to navigate by. It’s not exactly detailed, but that’s fine. Thundercracker shuts off his optics and feels Starscream wheeling above in air currents and vibration; he hears it in the resonation of his engine and the doppler effect of his passage. His wings gather sensory data and assemble the room into a rough three-dimensional space: a few objects scattered on the floor, an irregular something at one end of the pit, all easily avoidable.

He leaps into the air after Starscream.

As he’d thought, there’s no room to get up any real speed. That’s fine. Starscream is clumsy on his new wings, all wide turns and wobbling like a protoform. Thundercracker laughs as Starscream wrestles them under control, cursing. He flicks his wings rudely at Thundercracker once he does and nearly smacks into a wall for it. Thundercracker laughs harder.

They chase each other around and around the pit at low speed. Thundercracker keeps just ahead, just out of reach, as Starscream struggles and swears and tries to catch him.

Starscream’s flightpath evens out. His turns come more naturally. After a joor he’s worked out his stiffness. It’s only a matter of letting the deep code surface; they were made for this, and you never really forget. When Starscream finally catches Thundercracker he whoops with delight and they go spiralling around the room’s perimeter, rising and diving. Starscream’s triumphant laughter rings over the comms.

They land one after another. Starscream stumbles as he transforms, his wings held at an odd angle. He makes a sound of pain.

Thundercracker reaches for him. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“I think I pulled something. Just moving things I’m not used to moving.” Starscream waves Thundercracker off and his optic flattens to a wincing line. He gropes for the wing seam he can’t reach. Thundercracker finds it for him, spots a cable pinched between plates, and nudges it back into place. Starscream lets out a sharp vent and straightens. “Oh, that’s better.”

“That should stop happening once your proprioception adjusts. Your processor doesn’t know where your wings are yet, half the time.”

Starscream sniffs. “I know where my wings are just fine, thank you.”

“Yeah, that’s why you keep smacking people with them.”

“That’s slander and I won’t listen to it.”

“That was amazing,” someone says.

Thundercracker jerks to attention. It’s only then he notices they aren’t alone. A single point of blue light watches from the pit’s open door, its owner a silhouette almost a part of the darkness. For a moment the shape seems much bigger than it is, stretched and distorted in the corridor’s dim glow.

Then Damus comes closer, and the illusion vanishes. Thundercracker cycles down his combat subroutines. _Primus_, he thought he was past this place making him jumpy.

“I’ve never seen anyone fly like that outside a holovid,” Damus says. “No wonder you seekers were Megatron’s air force.”

Starscream crosses his arms and looks away. “Please. That flight was nothing. It was undignified as a newly forged garbage truck wandering across the sparkfield and I’ll thank you not to pretend it was anything else.” He says it with scorn, but Starscream will preen under any praise, even Damus’. “You should have seen what I could do a few thousand vorns ago. I held the undisputed airspeed record until they banned me from competing. The aftheads just couldn’t handle the embarrassment of losing to a cold construct.”

“I wish I had. I’ve always admired the gracefulness of flightframes. Even before the functionists it was rare to see any close up.”

Thundercracker resettles his plating with a full-body rattle. “You literally used to know me and Skywarp.”

Damus laughs. “Not well. And you don’t count. You don’t have Starscream’s artistic flair. If you flew the way you did in the races, Starscream, I see why Megatron made you air commander.”

Starscream’s wingtips flick into a posture of bitterness and annoyance, but Damus can’t read wings. “Yes, well, much to everyone’s disappointment, I’m not him.”

“But you are, don’t you see? Timelines, parallel universes… None of that matters. Anything your other self did, you also have the potential to do. Nothing the functionists did to us changed who we are. They tried to break us and look at you now! Standing here, alive, defiant, _flying_. You outlasted everyone who caged you. I can picture you diving among the explosions, all lit in their glow—a weapon built for the council, turned in their hand to destroy them! I’m not a violent mech, but if I ever got my claws on the institute doctors who took my face…”

Damus stares into the distance, pincers rigidly clenched. Then he cycles his vents and relaxes.

“I suppose it’s all oil under the bridge, isn’t it?” Damus says, more thoughtfully. “The institute is destroyed, the council obliterated in their insane quest for galactic purification, and now only the senate remains—weak, corrupt, and coasting on the tattered remnants of the council like scavengers at a turbofox kill. They’ll let Cybertron rust to a shell around them and never notice, too busy feeding on its carcass. You could still make a difference, you know. You’re capable of great things, Starscream.”

Thundercracker has a certain resistance to monologues built up over thousands of vorns (you sort of have to, around the likes of Starscream and Megatron), but this is getting excessive. Does Damus have a crush on Starscream? Is that what this is? Bad news for him, in that case. As far as Thundercracker’s ever been able to tell, Starscream has a type, and it’s _big enough to snap him in half_. Even if it weren’t for the… Everything else, Damus just doesn’t rate.

“It’s a shame the council died so quickly,” Damus says. “They deserved worse.”

“They did,” Starscream mutters.

Damus comes closer, optic shining. “They deserved exactly what you gave them: assassination. Slow execution. They stood in the way of a new and better world. That better world is still possible, Starscream. You can still _be_ that other self. Join me. _Help_ me. Together we can overturn the senate and restore—”

A sizzling noise followed by an electric _pop_ echoes from the corridor outside. Amp’s voice is faintly audible, swearing.

The overhead lights come on in blazing spotlight flares. Thundercracker (optics tuned to maximum sensitivity) is immediately blind. He clutches at his face, reeling under the assault, his confused defensive systems insisting a flashbang’s just gone off beside him. Starscream yelps, arms curled around his head. Even Damus flinches. Thundercracker scrubs washer fluid from his optics and gets a vague impression of towering, rust-stained walls and too many overhead lights.

Damus staggers to the door. “Amp, turn it off!”

“Sorry, I’m trying! This cable splice is a mess!”

“Just **_do_** it!”

Even with his optics dialed down, Thundercracker can still barely see. The lights dim from _supernova_ to _serviceable_ and he wipes the last of the washer fluid away. For a moment he thinks the room’s dark again—but no, he just hasn’t readjusted his optics to normal.

The charnel pit comes into focus; it’s the first time he’s seen it in anything other than wireframe flight telemetry. The ceiling seems to vanish in the gloom, even lit. The citizens of Lower Iacon have made a game attempt at scrubbing away its past and decorating it in murals, but given that none of them can fly, above sixty feet the walls carry a patina of suspect rust. Assorted furniture litters the floor, most of it simple: tables, chairs, benches in rows.

“Terribly sorry for the interruption,” Damus says, rubbing irritably at his optic. “Now, as I was saying...”

But Thundercracker’s attention is fixed on what lies beyond the benches on the other side of the pit: the thing he’d mistaken for leftover machinery, hulking and monumental. It rests on a raised platform like a stage or a dais, twice life-size, pose powerful, face a mask of stern regard. Lovingly assembled from scrap metal, it’s set as if to be gazed upon. _Worshipped_, an icon like the massive golden statue of Primus far above. Behind it is a vast Decepticon sigil painted on the wall.

_Megatron_.

  
  



	13. Chapter 13

_Services,_ Thundercracker thinks, and tamps down on incredulous laughter. What in the_ literal_ pit have they wandered into?

The statue of Megatron doesn’t stop being what it is. Thundercracker remembers _Megatron will save us_, remembers the worshipful way half of Lower Iacon and Damus especially speaks of him. He hasn’t just ended up in a slum or a resistance enclave—Lower Iacon is at least half cult, and Damus is their leader. A supreme irony, given how Megatron had always treated organized religion among the ranks.

If Ratchet knows about this he’ll lose respect for the mech entirely.

“What the _actual_ frag,” Thundercracker says.

“It’s a striking likeness, isn’t it? I think we captured him quite nicely.” Damus glances at the statue, then back at Thundercracker as if this is all perfectly ordinary and not _rustfragging insane_.“I suppose it wouldn’t have quite the same effect. You worked with him for eons; no statue can capture Megatron’s true fire, his _passion. _But I think he’d appreciate the effort, don’t you?”

Thundercracker means to repeat himself, but what comes out is a sort of inarticulate gargle. No, Megatron would probably _not_ appreciate the effort of a giant statue, because he was always more about being feared than loved. Parades, monuments and worship were more Starscream’s bag (slag him if he admits that to Damus out loud). He looks to Starscream for support. Instead of shock or horror Starscream only seems confused, his helm tilted back to take in the whole of the statue’s massive chassis.

“That’s Megatron?” Starscream asks. “I was expecting more… I don’t know. Guns. Laser turrets.”

Damus says, “He gave up his fusion cannon in the name of peace. As he stated in his treatise, _Peace through empathy—”_

“Stupid of him,” Starscream mutters.

“It wasn’t stupid, it was brave! A revolution needs more than murder, Starscream. It must right the world’s wrongs and uplift the downtrodden. Cybertron must be remade, but none of us are strong enough to do it alone! Only together can we wipe away the last of the functionist regime and enter a new age. A revolution needs every drudge and worker, every sympathetic doctor, scientist, and archivist! It needs a leader to marshal them all against the corrupt regime that has stolen our faces, our hands, our very selves!”

When Damus finishes he’s panting, his fans whirring, his optic wide and bright. It’s a nice little speech, but Thundercracker’s getting the bad feeling he used to get near the end of the war, the _I-Starscream-am-now-etcetera-etcetera_ feeling when slag was about to go sideways. “And that leader is you?”

“What? No.” Damus stares as if Thundercracker had suggested they all pop ‘round the towers for an evening soiree. “Of course not.”

Okay, now he’s just lost. His processor latches onto the next possibility: all that fawning over Starscream, all those comparisons to his other self… “It’s… Starscream?”

“Don’t be _dense_, Thundercracker. It doesn’t suit you. We’re all part of it, of course, but—look. You know as well as I that Cybertron is riddled in the underlayers’ tunnels and catacombs. One might reach very nearly anywhere with the right map… But we don’t need to go far. As you may have guessed, the ossuary was once a data archive. The question is, for what?”

Damus has the anticipatory gleam in his optic of one who knows the answer to his own question. Thundercracker’s _slag going sideways_ meter rises another tick. He thinks hard. Given the age of the smelting complex, it would have to be something old. Something of no prestige, to have been built on the edge of the industrial district among the belching factory smoke. Something that _needed an archive_. And perhaps easy access to a smelting pit.

“The stockade,” Starscream says, softly.

“The prison of Garrus-10,” Damus corrects, full of smug pride. “It was rebuilt on the stockade’s ruins and stands even now above our beloved dead. The stockade is where the council kept those useful enough to save for later, but not important enough to house on the cog—and the senate has followed their lead. I need your help, both of you. With Starscream’s tactical brilliance and a warframe’s armaments, we can hit them from beneath before they realize what’s happened. The pieces are already in place. Once Megatron is freed from the mobius generator, with Starscream once more at his right hand, we’ll surge from Lower Iacon and overthrow the corrupt senate in a single rising coup! Are you with me?”

“Damus…” Thundercracker resets his vocalizer uncomfortably. “That can’t happen.”

“What do you mean, _that can’t happen?_ I assure you the plan will work. Garrus-10 has very little security focused below the complex—I doubt they're aware the ossuary exists. If you need heavier weaponry, I can provide—”

“Megatron isn’t in Garrus-10,” Thundercracker says. “Damus, Megatron is dead.”

“No he isn’t! That’s a rumor put out by the Galactic Council to keep anyone from coming for him. When he was sentenced he was given a choice—”

“Between infinite imprisonment in a mobius generator and execution by spark extraction. I know. He was given a choice, and he chose. I’m sorry, Damus, but the truth is he was old, and he was tired, and by the end he thought the universe would be better off without him. You know the Galactic Council would’ve had half the galaxy declaring war on us if he hadn’t gone quietly.”

Damus stares at him for a long moment, optic unblinking, huge and round as Luna-1. His plating clamps tight to his body, ventilations silent, statue-still. “You’re lying.”

“Why would I—”

“Megatron would never abandon us. He’s too important to the cause. The fight isn’t over!”

“Of course he'd abandon you,” Thundercracker interrupts. “He abandoned the Decepticons! He wasn’t a hero, Damus. He wasn’t a martyr! When the end of the war came he renounced us, left us in the ruins, and went off to play reformed Autobot in the stars. It’s what he is. He just _does things_, sweeps you along, and leaves you in the wreckage.”

“He wouldn’t.” Damus’ pincers clamp together so hard paint curls away. His optic seems even bigger, all bleached and staring. “Megatron is in Garrus-10 waiting for me to rescue him, and you _will_ help me do it.”

“Yeah, uh, that’s not happening.” If Damus were a different mech Thundercracker might ready himself for a fight, but… Mostly what he feels is tired. Tired and disappointed. He’d _liked_ Damus. Now he feels stupid for it. He’d even liked Lower Iacon (in a way, sort of, mostly for the nostalgia value). Is there anything on this slagpit planet that doesn’t come with strings attached? How much of Damus’ generosity was genuine and how much was calculated? All of it? Are the others in on it? 

What about Swerve? _Ratchet_, even? How far does it go?

“I’ve had enough of wars and revolutions,” Thundercracker says. “All I want to do is take my trinemate home. It was great and all to let us stay, and thanks again for repairing Starscream, but that doesn’t buy our help to break a mech out of prison who isn’t even there.” Thundercracker consults his chronometer. The spacebridge next opens tomorrow. They can wait it out up top. He’d intended to skip it and give Starscream a little more time to recover, but… “You know what, we’re just gonna… Go. Thanks but no thanks. Come on, Starscream.”

Thundercracker turns on his heel and makes for the door. Starscream follows perplexedly, his helm turned back and still watching the Megatron statue. At its base Damus seems tiny as a scraplet, delicate and fragile. Thundercracker would almost feel bad about walking out on him, except for the part where he doesn’t.

“**_I don’t think you’re going anywhere_**,” Damus says, cold as the void.

And Thundercracker’s spark… Shudders.

For an absurd moment he thinks, _the killswitch, the functionists have—_but no. He collapses to one knee clutching his cockpit, gasping, fans roaring to clear the molten heat that isn’t there. His spark aches down deep where no pain should be and for a moment he’s above Iacon _burning falling dying_ and he can’t get up, can’t think, can’t move—

Starscream’s claws close tight enough around Thundercracker’s forearm to dent his protoform. Starscream’s optic swims into view, a crimson smear between white wings. Thundercracker is dimly aware of him, of being asked what’s wrong, what’s _happening_, but can’t make out the words. For a moment he thinks this is the trine bond destabilizing; that he and this universe’s Starscream are incompatible in some fundamental way and it’s tearing him apart. But it’s worse.

Little Damus. _Poor little Glitch_, small, harmless, and unassuming. Thundercracker chokes on laughter. Suddenly he knows _exactly_ what happened to Damus in another world. He knows who he became: the commandant who operated the prison furnaces of Grindcore and tortured thousands of traitors to death in Megatron’s name. A voice that breaks machines can just as easily break people.

Damus of Tarn. _Ha_.

The pain eases off. Thundercracker sucks in air and finds himself on hands and knees, Starscream bracing him upright. His combat subroutines come online half scrambled. He tastes raw energon at the back of his throat, hopes nothing has ruptured, shoves Starscream clumsily out of the way, and rises. His every instinct tells him to shoot Damus where he stands but he knows how it will go—knows from countless numbers of the DJD’s broadcasted executions. They’d all tried to kill Tarn at some point. The moment their guns twitched to bear, Tarn had simply _spoken_: that beautiful, melodic voice rolled out of him, rich as triple-refined engex, enumerating his victims’ sins as they writhed and screamed and bled.

There Damus stands now, so different from the hulking creature in Thundercracker’s memory. His optic is touched with genuine regret, as though he dislikes being forced to visit this on Thundercracker. Deeper still, a thread of fanatic devotion that doesn’t care what it breaks along the way. If Damus needs to kill him to get to Starscream, he will. Whatever he must do to restore Megatron impossibly at the head of the revolution, of a _world_—he will do.

Starscream rises, optic narrow with suspicion. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Damus answers. “We were only talking, Starscream. Having a discussion, like reasonable mechs. Thundercracker has seen the error in his thinking. Haven’t you, Thundercracker?”

“And I’m heavy construction machinery,” Starscream spits. “Nothing about this is reasonable. I knew these wings didn’t come free. You could have asked upfront and instead you pull this manipulative obligation _pitslag—_”

“We both know what your other self accomplished.” Damus’ optic gleams as he steps toward Starscream, that awful statue looming behind him. “You could be that again. Help me! Help all of Cybertron, take up your rightful place at Megatron’s side, and remake civilization! Don’t the functionists’ filthy remnants need to be swept away? Their corruption lurks on every surface, waiting for the cleansing fire! We’ll kill the senate and overturn their towers. We have an army waiting!”

He can’t possibly mean—no, he definitely does. “An army of leakers and empties and rust-eaten dregs,” Thundercracker rasps. “The Decepticons were labor when we rose, but we were heavy labor. You can’t marshal Lower Iacon against Primax! They’ll cut you down in the first klik, Damus. You have to see that!”

“**_Shut up,_**” Damus growls.

Pain bursts through Thundercracker’s chassis. He doesn’t get any warning, just drops with a choked noise. His cockpit feels full of lava. It’s like a titan’s hand wrapped around his spark, _squeezing_.

Starscream lunges at Damus, claws out.

“**_What a disappointment_**,” Damus says bitterly.

Starscream screams and drops halfway there, scrabbling at his chest, writhing, optic wild. His pincers score his paint where he digs into his chassis to find the pain and make it stop. Damus glares at him in frustration, as if at the tantrum of a protoform.

“**_I really had hoped we could do this the easy way_.**”

“Frag you!” Starscream snarls.

Damus steps fastidiously over Starscream’s convulsing body and over to Thundercracker, who’s in better shape only by virtue of having a moment to catch his breath. “**_I don’t enjoy being forced into such extreme measures, you know, but what’s that Earth saying from your movie, Thundercracker? Breaking eggs to make oubliettes? Something like that._**”

Oh, if only Thundercracker had knocked Damus’ head off the moment they’d met. “If this is the easy way, what’s the hard one?”

Damus smiles an empuratee’s smile. It isn’t kind. “**_I suppose we’ll find out together, won’t we?_**”

[I can’t believe this.]

[System error: message latency exceeded/recipient offline. Please re-send.]

[I asked you how you got yourself into these situations and the answer is apparently that you’re stupid.]

[System error: message latency exceeded/recipient offline. Please re-send.]

[Why didn’t you just shoot him? You could have, but no. Look at me, I’m Thundercracker, I’m trying to be a good person even if it gets me killed!]

[System error: message latency exceeded/recipient offline. Please re-send.]

[This was never a problem with the Decepticons. That’s because we weren’t glitched enough to toss ourselves into black holes like Optimus slagging Prime. You see where self-sacrifice gets you? Dead. Then they put up statues of you and pretend they knew what you would have wanted and a thousand vorns later some bright spark probably leads a holy war in your name. What kind of a system is that? At least if you’re alive you can change things, not that it ever got us very far. Maybe if Megatron had made better plans instead of going off half-cocked trying to conquer the universe.]

[System error: message latency exceeded/recipient offline. Please re-send.]

[Half-cocked, get it? That’s a gun joke.]

[System error: message latency exceeded/recipient offline. Please re-send.]

[Wake up, idiot.]

Thundercracker wakes in a cell, in the dark, chained by the leg in the defunct remains of a smelting pit. He takes a moment to reflect that this truly has been the worst working vacation ever.

The sad thing is he doesn’t even panic (well, maybe a little, but it’s an indulgence). Dealing with slag like this over the course of the war has become so familiar it barely registers. Coming out of stasis in a dead cold crucible with bars welded over the top? No allies? No help on the way? Damus off doing Primus-knows-what and Starscream Primus-knows-where? Officially less intimidating than attending a fancy towers party. Been there, done that, already compartmentalized the nightmares.

In a way it’s almost nice. It makes things simple: find Starscream, disable Damus before he can use that pit-damned voice (or maybe kick him in the head so hard his optic breaks), and get the frag off this trashfire planet. He’s not sure exactly how long he was out, but according to his chronometer there’s still time to reach the spacebridge if he hurries.

If he never leaves Earth again, it’ll be too soon.

Thundercracker rolls onto his front. He examines his prison. The crucible sits at a slight angle, a thin layer of molten metal whose source he’d rather not think about solidified at the bottom. When he dials his optics to maximum sensitivity he sees an enormous hook protruding from the top where once it hung from a dipper. The dipper still exists far overhead, rusted through. The crucible must’ve fallen during the complex’s long abandonment and lain there ever since. Its walls are likely thicker than his arms, impervious to heat, and impossible to punch through. It’s far too heavy to move or to roll.

Oh well. No big deal.

Thundercracker bends to inspect the chain and cuff welded around his right thruster, sets his left thruster to it, and fires. Metal drips red-hot to the bottom of the crucible without even scorching his paint. When the chain breaks he turns his thrusters on the bars overhead. They give way in about half a klik. What use would his thrusters be if they weren’t heat-resistant?

New Cybertron’s civilians really don’t have any idea about warframe endurance.

Thundercracker fires his thrusters one last time, just enough to propel him up onto the crucible’s top. He lands lightly. As he’d suspected, he’s deep in the belly of the smelting complex that makes up Lower Iacon. It looks like a defunct processing floor, all the blast furnaces dark, the runoff gutters full of shiny metal and congealed slag. The stories are apparently true: the complex shut down mid-processing and the runoff is full of… Bits. He’s pretty sure that’s an arm sticking out of the puddle under the leftmost furnace. _Gross._

He swallows a moment’s terror that the crucible wasn’t the prison—that Damus has locked him down here to starve with the corpses. But, through the trine bond, he senses Starscream.

Thundercracker cycles his vents in relief. Starscream is close. He doesn’t feel as if he’s in pain; the only emotion that swamps the bond is fury, and that’s so familiar as to be comforting. Starscream has always burned rage like fuel. It’s how he gets anything done.

His wings give him a sense of the space without having to see it clearly. It’s all little things: the slightest air currents, the clink of shifting chain, the deep thrum of machinery operating somewhere else. His biolights cast weird, flickering shadows among the wreckage. It’s a good thing he doesn’t believe in ghosts. If any place on this whole awful planet is haunted, it’s surely this one.

A faint glow issues from what his positioning system claims is west. Thundercracker fixes its location in his mind and hops off the crucible, using his thrusters only enough to cushion his landing. Wherever Damus is, Thundercracker doesn’t want him to hear him coming. He cranks all his senses to maximum and creeps through the processing floor on full stealth. His spark tugs him onward. He holds Starscream’s incandescent rage in his spark like a magnet. If Damus thinks Starscream can be talked around, he’s very much mistaken. Starscream’s never been talked into anything he didn’t want to do in his life.

The sound of machinery grows louder. On the opposite end of the processing floor is a door. Faint light bleeds from beneath, deep and red. Unease curls low in Thundercracker’s tanks. He shuts off all his running lights and barely dares to vent. Still he sees it like a portal to Unicron’s maw; somewhere behind it is Starscream, and probably Damus. A faint sound issues through the mechanical rumble. He presses his audial to the door and smiles, despite himself. Even as an echo, Starscream mid-rant is impossible to mistake.

It’s tempting, as he creeps through, to turn off his audials entirely. His whole auditory processing suite, in fact—but it wouldn’t protect him from Damus’ voice. He should know. Enough of Tarn’s victims had tried it. Damus’ ability hardly sounds dangerous as outlier abilities go, but then most don’t when you get right down to it. Thundercracker generates shock waves, Skywarp can translocate himself within a certain radius, Starscream’s spark refuses to fade, and Damus is a living interference signal generator. How had it felt when he’d first tuned into the frequency of a spark? Had it been deliberate? Was it malicious or self-defense? Had he understood what he’d done as he first spoke a mech to death?

Machinery hums and rattles enough to cover his footsteps as Thundercracker creeps along the gantry above the production floor. On his right, molds for pouring out ingots of _sentio metallico_ lie cold and silent, the forges dark, the pits empty; on his left, ancient conveyers wheeze beneath the thumping impact of pistons. A row of furnaces fills the air with suffocating heat. His internal temperature ticks up, but Thundercracker rejects the prompt to turn on his fans. Better not to give himself away. He leans over the railing and frowns at the production line. He supposes this explains Lower Iacon’s electrical problems.

Damus is stamping out weapons. A revolution might need more than murder, but it does need a baseline amount. The housings of golden-age guns and blades and laser pistols march by, steaming white-hot, forged from the corpses of the ancient dead.

What is Damus thinking? He’s planning for a revolution that’s already come and gone, or one that will never come—one he doesn’t even plan to lead. Thundercracker wonders what the Megatron statue is made of and shudders. He supposes there’s grim poetry in it—that, at least, Megatron might have appreciated.

Completed weapons lie in piles. Thundercracker picks up a laser rifle. It's delicate in his hands, its design thousands of vorns out of date and made for a daintier grip. He takes it with him anyway. It makes him feel better to have it swinging by his side.

The production floor widens below. At the end is a workshop, all grimy metal and soot-stained walls. Red light spills from a solitary forming furnace, molten glow painting everything crimson. Damus paces before it, his shadow stretched long, his optic a single point of ice. It falls across a makeshift cage of pipes barely larger than Damus himself. Within it—crouched, wings twisted, and unable even to stand upright—is Starscream.

Damus has made the workshop his own. Tattered golden-age blueprints and sketches of his own design litter the space; drawings of Megatron looking regal, mostly. Empty energon cubes are an uneven stack on a drafting table. More disturbing are the curiosities tacked to the walls: a pair of hands (too big to be Damus’), the half-disassembled corpse of a gunformer, a series of gape-mouthed faceplates. Above the table a pair of sharply curved winglets are mounted like trophies, their shiny red-and-white medical crosses almost enough to hide the dead grey metal underneath. The furnace light bleaches Starscream of all color but his baleful optic. _That_ fixes unerringly on Damus, promising murder. His claws cycle open and shut. If not for the cage he’d no doubt be trying to rip Damus’ head off.

Thundercracker dismisses the impulse to do the same thing. This will take more than brute force. Of their trine, Starscream is the engine that keeps them moving. Skywarp is the unthinking fists. Thundercracker is the tireless wings.

Thundercracker is patience.

“I’ll kill you,” Starscream says, flatly. “If you’ve hurt him, I’ll kill you.”

“We’ve been through this, Starscream,” Damus says. “Thundercracker is perfectly fine, for now. Just cooling his heels. I have no interest in hurting either of you. Why can’t you see that? All I want is your help. Don’t you owe me that?”

“Go frag yourself with a rusty piston!”

“I don’t see why this has to be difficult. I thought you’d leap at the chance to take vengeance on those who have wronged you. To wrest this world from its degenerating course! New Cybertron could be a paradise. All it needs is a guiding hand.” Damus’ voice takes on a note not of destruction but _compulsion_, one so strong Thundercracker feels himself swayed even from this distance. “**_Megatron could be that hand. Thundercracker said your rule over Cybertron was the best it ever had. Wouldn’t you like to have the planet under your control? To go out among the adoring masses? Don’t you _care_?_**”

“No,” Starscream grates, unmoved. The persuasion rolls off him like oil, his spark too self-assured to be bent to another’s will. “Frankly _no_, Damus. This planet has killed everyone I ever loved, and it can fall into the nearest sun and burn to a cinder for all I care.”

“B-but,” Damus sputters, optic wide and furious. “But you—_we_—could change it! It doesn’t have to be this way! You fought for thousands of vorns to—”

“I fought not to get slagged! A different Starscream was a revolutionary. A different Starscream pledged himself to your pit-damned _Megatron_, and I’m not him! I don’t owe this planet anything. Let it rot and die! It’s what it deserves.” Bent through the bars, Starscream’s wings flare in a threat display so blatant even Damus can’t miss it. “You want a revolution? Lead it yourself! Oh wait, you can’t, because _ruler of a decrepit little pit_ is about the limit of what you can manage by twisting weak mechs’ minds. No one will ever charge after _you_ into battle.”

“I know that! Don’t you think I know? I don’t want to lead! I never have. I’m not selfish. Megatron is objectively better—he’s brilliant, experienced, and he knows how to fight. Your other self understood that, so _why can’t you just_—”

“Because you’re a coward,” Starscream hisses. “Because you love the idea of revolution, but you want other people to do it for you. Megatron probably didn’t come back because he forgot you existed—or he would have if he weren’t _dead_.”

“**_Shut up!_**” Damus snarls.

Starscream collapses, convulsing, as that voice turns hard as diamond. His optic flickers. Thundercracker’s spark throbs in sympathy. His trinemate’s agony echoes through the bond, hot and sharp, not the sensation of being crushed that Thundercracker gets when Damus speaks—it’s something stranger, an _intensification_, like radioactive ore in a hydraulic press.

Thundercracker grits his teeth, dampens the bond, and creeps closer. The nearer he gets the worse it is. Warnings flash across his HUD as his spark reels, as minor energon lines pop under the strain. Just—a little—more—

“**_You’re the coward_**.” Damus’ ventilations come quick, his claws quivering as he stares at Starscream’s twitching form. “**_Why won’t you take up the banner? You lead another world through revolution at Megatron’s side—why won’t you take your place? _This is what you’re for!**”

“What the frag kind of functionist pitslag is that?” Thundercracker asks, breathlessly, and smashes Damus over the back of the head with the rifle butt.

The rifle breaks instantly, because it’s trash. Damus goes down like a pile of spare parts. He lies still, optic dark. For a very long moment Thundercracker considers hitting him again, and again, and _again_, until he’s as dead and unrecognizable as any other of the complex’s corpses. His grip on the bent rifle tightens. No one would even know he did it—except maybe Amp. Thundercracker can’t imagine Damus lets the rest of Lower Iacon down here.

The thought of Marissa is all that stops him. If everything goes according to plan, he’ll see her again in a few short joors. He doesn’t want to do it with energon on his hands.

Thundercracker steps over Damus’ crumpled form. He drops the rifle, takes the cage bars in two hands and _wrenches_. Metal squeals. The whole thing comes apart at the welds. On the cage floor Starscream lies twitching and smoking, biolights flickering erratically. Fuel drips shiny and pink from a shallow gash in his protoform to puddle on dirty metal. He must’ve caught himself with his own claws. He looks bad, but Thundercracker knows how Tarn would torment his victims for joors or cycles without killing; Damus didn’t want him dead. This can be fixed.

He has to believe it.

“Th’ spaceport,” Starscream mutters, half-lucid. “Thundercracker… We need to get to…”

And Thundercracker knows he isn’t here, he isn’t _now_. He scoops Starscream from the cage and into his arms, his hand flat against a wing wracked with involuntary tremors. He strokes along its edge. “I know, Starscream.”

The contact seems to re-center Starscream. He shakes his helm once, twice, and focuses on Thundercracker. His optic turns to wander confusedly across the workshop and its ruddy light, the remains of the cage, and Damus in a heap on the floor.

A low growl issues from Starscream’s vocalizer. He thrashes. It’s all Thundercracker can do to keep him restrained. “Let me at him!”

“I know killing him sounds like a good idea right now—”

“It sounds like a good idea anytime!”

It might be the smartest thing in the long run, but the war taught him that the simplest solutions aren’t always the best ones. Besides, standing by and watching Starscream murder Damus doesn’t seem much different from doing it himself. “And what happens to Lower Iacon then?”

“Who _cares?_ Look at this place, he’s a fanatic! You want to let him go so he can talk some other sucker to death?”

Thundercracker winces. “Well… No, but—look, once we get back to Earth this’ll be all over the newsfeeds. He won’t have a chance.”

“You’re soft as mercury and I don’t know how you survived your war,” Starscream says, disgusted, and wriggles out of Thundercracker’s grip. He lands crouched and looms over Damus’ prone form like a giant spider, claws poised to gut him. “I should blind him and take off his arms. Let him crawl around in the dark. See how he likes that.”

“Just leave him,” Thundercracker says, a little desperately. Should he let Starscream do it? Would Starscream forgive him for grabbing him and marching out, leaving Damus in hard reboot on the floor? He checks his chronometer—they’re cutting it thin. “If we miss the spacebridge opening, we’re stuck here for another decacycle.”

Starscream doesn’t move. He stares down at Damus, a silhouette outlined against the furnace, optic red as the heart of a forge. His claw-tips gleam inches from Damus’ vulnerable civilian frame. Damus is nothing like Tarn, in this way; no thickened armor, no tearing claws or wide-bore fusion cannons. It would be easy for Starscream to kill him. To puncture his fuel tank, or rip off his limbs, or peel him open and tear out his spark.

Easy.

“_Fine_,” Starscream says, finally. “But I’m not letting him talk in the meantime.”

Quick as a turbofox he hooks a claw into the dark space under Damus’ optic and rips out his vocalizer. Sparks sizzle. Thundercracker winces. Damus twitches but doesn’t come online. Starscream staggers upright, throws the vocalizer down and stomps on it. When he lifts his thruster it’s nothing but metal scraps and fragments of ruined circuitry.

“Thank you,” Thundercracker says.

“I didn’t do it for you,” Starscream says, without quite looking at him. His optic roves over the soot-stained workshop and the wings pinned to the wall. It flattens in distaste. “Now, what’s the fastest way out of this slagheap?”


	14. Chapter 14

The deepest tunnels are pitch-dark and even more resoundingly abandoned than the ones Lower Iacon inhabits. Fortunately, they’re also wide, unobstructed, and familiar. The planet might have been reformatted, but not everything can change—and nothing has changed down here in thousands of vorns.

Thundercracker and Starscream speed through the dark, lit only by their biolights, optics useless, relying on the sensitivity of their wings and instrumentation to keep them from crashing. Starscream’s telemetry suite is less sensitive and Thundercracker maps his own war-refined senses onto him, picking out every turn and block and fallen beam bright as sunlight.

It’s night when they spiral up through a gas-exchange vent near the industrial district. Its mouth is grated, but Thundercracker tears through, easy as tinfoil. They rise and rise into the sky as Iacon—_Primax_—spreads below like a second neon starfield. There’s an odd sound and after a moment he realizes Starscream is laughing. It’s giddy, triumphant, disbelieving; the sensation seeps through the bond, inescapable. Even after having his wings reattached, Starscream never really believed he’d be up here again. He turns a barrel roll, exuberant as Skywarp.

“Careful,” Thundercracker warns. “Your welds are still new.”

“Worry about your own welds, Thundercracker.”

“Just don’t break anything until we’re through the spacebridge. My wings aren’t exactly factory fresh, either. I don’t know if I can carry you.”

Speaking of which: the spacebridge is a glittering hoop halfway across Primax, but grows larger by the second. Its core lies dormant, but if Thundercracker’s chronometer is accurate after so long underground, the next cargo transit should begin at any moment. The slowly accelerating lights around its rim speak to that. It’s not quite as good as the heart of a titan, but when it spins up, it will fold space along its length, _here_ to _there_; all they’ll have to do is get through it.

He doesn’t plan on submitting himself to customs. The smartest thing to do is find somewhere to hide and dart through mid-transit before anyone can stop them. New Cybertron probably doesn’t have any serious anti-flightframe defenses yet.

_Probably._

They circle in the upper atmosphere, hidden by darkness. Thundercracker takes in the shape of the spacebridge’s platform, the security barriers, and the cargo exchange areas surrounding it. Like most things on New Cybertron, it isn’t well-shielded from the air. Their best bet is to conceal themselves within the cranes and crates of the starboard cargo yard and make a break for it at the last moment. The canyons between the shipping containers are deep and shadowed, but the gap between the yard and the spacebridge is floodlit and blinding. They’ll need to be very, very quick.

Thundercracker gestures Starscream down. They land as quietly as possible in the cargo yard, Cybertronian- and human-sized shipping containers all stacked in a maze of rusty rainbows. Some are empty, some filled with mysterious goods. It’s rained during the night, but Thundercracker doesn’t worry. It’s been long enough that the acid has self-neutralized on the planet’s surface. All that remains is wetness that reflects distorted neon.

Thundercracker peers around a stack of shipping containers, wings folded close. In the distance the spacebridge’s lights spin faster and faster, a blue glow gathering around its rim. Soon it will bloom. The sound of their engines will give them away if they try to fly closer—they need to get as close as possible to the spacebridge on foot.

“Scrap,” Thundercracker mutters. “It’s guarded.”

“You were expecting something else?” Starscream asks.

“Not really. I was just hoping we were lucky for once.”

New Cybertron has put some serious muscle into guarding the spacebridge. Thundercracker wonders if it’s for him or if they’re just that paranoid. He counts at least three enforcers by the bridge mouth with more patrolling the perimeter. That’s not even counting the bridge’s own security, or the glass-faced enforcement drones that stalk the loading yard with guns swinging. Some quick consultation with his tactical systems tells him he won’t reach the spacebridge unscathed. While Thundercracker might be able to power through a few holes in his chassis, he can’t say the same for Starscream.

“We’ll need a distraction,” Thundercracker says.

“That’s easy. Sonic boom, knock over all the cargo, get through the bridge in the confusion.”

“A distraction that doesn’t end with you being shot down,” Thundercracker amends. “This place is crawling with enforcers.”

“Excuse you, I held the all-Cybertron airspeed record for—”

“Twenty-three vorns running, I know. But that was a long time ago, and at the moment you’re about as graceful as an insecticon on circuit speeders. Don’t argue, you know I’m right. Push too hard and something will crack.”

“I’ll show _you_ graceful,” Starscream mutters. He jabs a claw at Thundercracker. “Fine, but only because we get one shot at this. What’s your plan, genius? Please tell me it isn’t _Thundercracker draws the enforcers’ fire while Starscream goes for the bridge mouth_.”

Thundercracker squirms. He hasn’t had much time to think, and his processor is exhausted with everything else that’s happened today. “It isn’t… _Not_ that.”

“I despair of you, Thundercracker. I really do. What kind of stupid plan is that? At least mine uses our few assets to best effect. It’s efficient.”

“Efficient at getting you shot—”

Which is about when the weighted net drops on them.

Thundercracker’s wings flare in surprise—or they try. The net pins them near-instantly to his back. His knees hit the tarmac heavily and Starscream flails beside him, stuck on his front and tangled in fine steel cable. His claw snips through the closest strand, but there are dozens more. The more he cuts, the more entangled he becomes. A shrill alarm goes up; floodlights burn bright. Enforcers shout as they converge on their position. Thundercracker curses their bad luck. He heaves himself upright (what did they weight this thing with, depleted uranium?) and grabs the net’s fibers in two fists. He tenses to rip it in half.

There’s a tiny pinch between his chest plates. He looks down. A long, thin projectile like a mnemosurgeon’s needle has lodged itself in bare protoform, quivering. He has precisely enough time to think, _Oh frag, not this again_, before foreign coding sinks its hungry teeth into his systems.

Wartime viral defenses burn online. The virus swamps them, surging through his cortex, disabling weaponry and tactical systems but—strangely—leaving his mind intact. They’ve improved on the coding. When he tries belatedly to rip the net, he gets quarter power to his actuators. When he tries again, he gets an eighth. The net suddenly seems so heavy he can’t fight it and he collapses to his hands and knees, head swimming. It’s all he can do not to fold completely. All around them the enforcers close in.

“So we meet again, flightframe,” Barricade says, dripping self-satisfaction.

“Save it.” Thundercracker curls his lip.He’d like nothing more than to wipe that grin away, if he could only _stand up_. “Any idiot can work a stakeout.”

“But it takes a special kind of idiot to walk into a trap.” Barricade kicks Thundercracker in the side. All Thundercracker can do is grunt and take it. Barricade’s sidearm is a strange thing, elongated and thin-barrelled—it must’ve been what fired the needle. Much more precise than a cortical bullet, and more potent. He props the muzzle under Thundercracker’s jaw and forces his chin up. “You should’ve done what you were told like a good little citizen.”

“I don’t even live on this stupid planet! Are you proud of yourself for putting a watch on the one place we’d be forced to go sooner or later? Bet that took some real hard processing work.”

Barricade doesn’t rise to the bait. His grin widens. “Oh, this isn’t my op, flightframe. Like you said: I’m just a dumb enforcer. I do what I’m told.”

He straightens, spins his gun theatrically, and takes a step back. He gestures like this is the moment he’s been waiting for and Decanter walks out from behind a stack of shipping containers, flanked by a pair of security drones. Decanter looks positively tiny between them, all delicate plating and filigree reflected brightly on slick pavement.

Thundercracker is done mistaking _unarmored_ for _not dangerous_. He watches Decanter warily. Decanter looks from Thundercracker to the still-struggling Starscream and back again. His expression is difficult to decipher, but whatever else it is, it’s _definitely _gloating. “I really _am_ disappointed in you both. Such histrionics.”

“Stuff it up your tailpipe and get fragged,” Starscream spits.

“Oh, it speaks! We’ll have to remedy that. A thing like you has nothing of worth to say.” Decanter ignores Starscream and paces closer to Thundercracker. Thundercracker wrestles with the virus coursing through his systems with all his might, but he just—can’t—_move_. “Do you like the new virus? It was engineered at great expense just for you. It would be a shame if you were in any way unaware of what was happening to either you or your little… Friend.”

He says _friend_ like an epithet. Thundercracker looks dead into Decanter’s optics and fantasizes about breaking that shiny little neck. “What Starscream said.”

“The Council was right about you warframes, you flightframes.” Decanter runs a finger along the leading edge of Thundercracker’s wing as if checking for dust. Thundercracker feels contaminated in its wake. “Forged or constructed, you’re too ruled by instinct to function in polite society. With no war to fight you turn on your betters. I think your Cybertron discovered that, much to its detriment.” He rubs his fingers together. “I see you’ve been spending time in the sublayers. Did that sad little nest of insurgents take you in? Remind me to bring up rooting out those vermin to the senate. They’ve caused enough trouble already. We can collapse the sector and have done with it.”

Thundercracker spares a moment to wish he’d joined up with Damus’ crackpot revolution just to burn the towers down a second time. “It never occurred to you that treating people like things is the whole root of the problem?”

Decanter gestures. One of the security drones backhands Thundercracker. Thundercracker weathers it with a grunt.

“You _are_ things,” Decanter says, as if nothing happened. “Things which have gotten ideas and risen above their station. Primus made some of us to be tools and some to be the hands that wield them—it’s as simple as that. But it isn’t all bad! Look, I’ve recovered my wayward prize and gained another. Two for the price of one. Anyone would call that a bargain.” He flicks Thundercracker’s sensitive wingtip. “And such pretty wings. Too bad they’ll need to be removed.”

Fear knifes through Thundercracker hot on the heels of rage—and both dissolve into the suffocating blanket of the virus setting its hooks in his processor, dampening his every reaction in waves of errors and lockouts.

“But first,” Decanter murmurs right next to Thundercracker’s audial, “you’ve caused me an _awful_ lot of trouble. Now be quiet.”

He steps back and gestures once more to the security drones. They come forward, blunt fists raised.

There’s nothing Thundercracker can do but grit his teeth and endure. The drones ignore Starscream as they bring their fists down again and again, on his wings and hands and seams. There’s only so much even war armor can take. Thundercracker’s head snaps to the side. One of them activates a shock baton and jams it straight into his exposed protoform. Thundercracker screams through his teeth. A blow cracks his cockpit and a long-forgotten bismuth wafer tumbles out to shatter on the tarmac. It seems to go on forever.

When it ends he’s still on his hands and knees, but barely. He sways. Energon oozes down his frame and patters to the ground in shining droplets. Static flickers across his visual feed and he smells his own burnt wiring. Something is wrong with his wing hinge, the one Ratchet repaired. It grates whenever he shifts. He doesn’t know if it will hold his weight, not that it matters—he can’t even send the command to start his thrusters. The first spark of real terror penetrates his dizzy processor.

He could die here.

Metal squeals. Still trapped in the net, Starscream’s claws dig furrows in the pavement. His optic is full of murderous intent, fixed unerringly on Decanter as if imagining driving those claws through Decanter’s civilian-armored chassis.

Decanter smirks. “I’m sorry, do you have something to contribute?”

“I’ll kill you,” Starscream says flatly.

“No, you won’t. You haven’t in all the vorns I’ve owned you. What makes you think you’ll do any better now?” He tugs on Starscream’s wing. Starscream thrashes ineffectually, hissing like a broken steam pipe. “These are new. What did you have to trade to get them?”

Decanter takes the shock baton from the nearest security drone. He doesn’t turn it on, just prods Starscream’s trapped form with it. Starscream hisses louder. Decanter jabs him right in the wing hinge.

“I suppose that’s just like a flighty little jet, running off with the first pair of big wings to flicker in your direction.” He leans closer, the tip of the shock baton grinding against new welds. “I’ll make you an offer: come quietly, like a good little cold construct, and your knight in shining armor gets to live.”

Decanter steps back. The shock baton crackles to life, blue electricity arcing down its length. He starts for Thundercracker with all the easy self-assurance of a mech who’s never truly been in danger, and all Thundercracker can do is watch with sick fascination as the tip drifts closer to his face. The virus with its fangs in his motor functions keeps him pinned as surely as any restraint. His internal temperature climbs as his self-repair fights it, but the virus slips his grip, elusive as smoke. The baton looms closer until it fills the whole of Thundercracker’s visual field, reeking of ozone.

“He doesn’t need two optics, does he?” Decanter asks.

“Wait!”

The baton doesn’t waver. Neither does Decanter look at him. Sparks kiss Thundercracker’s jaw. “Are you going to behave?”

Starscream is near vibrating with tension. The trine bond is a whirlpool. Thundercracker feels the moment something breaks in him, some long-guarded scrap of defiance splintering under the weight of the future. For a few short cycles he had believed his life could be different, but this is what was, and is, and will be. The fall is all the harder for the rise. Thundercracker wants to shout at Starscream not to give in, but he can’t make a sound.

“Stop,” Starscream says. “Just—just stop. Don’t hurt him.”

The shock stick falls away. Thundercracker shivers in pure mechanimal relief. A shock stick through the optical socket is enough to mess up anyone’s day. Decanter wanders back to Starscream to smile down at his wayward prize, and he hands the shock stick back to the drone. Starscream stares up at him from the tangled net. The hate in his optic has guttered to something duller: resignation. Already he’s wrapping himself in layers of protective distance.

“There, now,” Decanter says, poisonously sweet. “Isn’t it much better to accept your place? There’s no sense in trying to be what you aren't, and what you are is nothing.”

When the enforcers cut him free of the net, he doesn’t even fight. They haul him upright and he stands there, posture uncertain, wings low. They cut Thundercracker free next, but it offers no relief. His legs won’t obey him; his arms are two lumps of inert metal. All that keeps him from toppling is inertia. Barricade strides in to tug the corner of Starscream’s wing and Starscream stumbles after. He looks back at Thundercracker, the reflection of his optic on the tarmac one wet smear of red. Thundercracker tells his combat systems to engage. He tells his thrusters to fire and his guns to spin up and his fists to clench but nothing will _move_. They’ve accounted for his countermeasures, and though he’s making slow progress, it isn’t enough. Short of direct medical intervention, he’s stuck. All he can do is rage silently as they lead Starscream away.

“Bring the other one to the chop shop,” Decanter says, over his shoulder. “Have them remove the head and hands. We’ll have a matching set for the arena. I may as well get some benefit out of this debacle.”

Starscream stumbles. “You said—”

“I said he’d live, cold construct. Don’t get greedy.”

When Barricade tugs his wing again, Starscream doesn’t move. A sharper tug doesn’t budge him, either. His gaze fixes on Decanter, claws hanging loose, his optic strangely blank.

“Greedy,” Starscream repeats.

“I said what I said, cold construct.” Decanter jerks his chin at Barricade. “Get it out of here before it does something embarrassing.”

When a third pull fails to move him, Barricade draws his gun. Starscream doesn’t even look at him. It’s as if he’s back to impersonating a drone—unthinking, unfeeling, one expressionless optic spilling baleful light on wet pavement. His claws don’t so much as twitch. 

Thundercracker nearly chokes on the wave of incandescent fury that rolls through the trine bond, the thick black hate like tarry poison. He’s only tasted this flavor of rage once before; when the Autobots burned Vos, and they were all breathing ashes.

“_Greedy_,_”_ Starscream shrieks, and launches himself at Decanter.

Barricade gets there first. Starscream jukes around the blow and drives his claws through Barricade’s throat. There’s no finesse to it, no showmanship, just violence. His optic gleams. Barricade goes down gargling on his own energon and Starscream steps over the twitching body, fuel-spattered to the shoulder. Another enforcer gets as far as raising his gun. A cortical bullet zips through Starscream’s wingtip, too thin for it to get purchase. Starscream goes crashing into him, all maiming strikes at the optics and protoform. He rips the enforcer’s gun from his grip and turns it on the others. Two security drones go down in a hail of gunfire. Spilled energon catches in a gout of flame. The fire paints Starscream in hellish light and he strides for Decanter like a thing out of the pit itself—which he is, in a way. A thing struck down and arisen. A thing which cannot die.

“Enforcers! Drones! To me! Where are the rest, damn you?” Decanter backs up, his entourage suddenly missing in action. Starscream stalks after him, fuel-spattered and nightmarish as a sparkeater. “Get back! Behave yourself, cold construct!”

“_Behave yourself,_” Starscream repeats, high and mocking. “How high should I jump, sir? Who should I kill for you, sir? I live to serve.”

“Yes, so stop this nonsense and—”

“But I was made for violence, alas, and can only fulfil my nature. Do you know what the thing _is_ about a flightframe’s nature?”

Decanter hesitates, perhaps sensing a trap. His paint job clashes terribly with the firelight, his yellow optics bright with fear. To his left are downed enforcers, to his right an impenetrable wall of shipping containers, and before him Starscream: a creature like vengeance made material. Starscream crowds him closer and closer until Decanter is plastered to the shipping container. The sharp jaw-points of Starscream’s empty helm nearly touch his face. Decanter cringes.

“The thing is,” Starscream says, sweet as rust candy, “all planes crash eventually, and it’s _always_ spectacular.”

He drives his claws through Decanter’s thin civilian plating and rips out his sparkchamber. It hangs glittering in his hand for a long moment even as that expensive frame topples and greys; as the spark wobbles and flares and loses containment. Starscream’s optic is bright as he crushes it between his pincers.

The rest of the drones and enforcers show up too late. Starscream throws himself at them in a whirlwind of violence, all death and no quarter. The enforcers are still trying to capture him, but Starscream has no such drive for survival. It shines through the trine bond like a beacon. He wants to die here. He _hopes_ for it, even—that he’ll finally find a way—because the alternative is losing Thundercracker forever.

Thundercracker fights through his blocked vocalizer. His first attempt at speech is a bleat of static, but the second shapes rasping words. “Starscream, the bridge!”

Starscream looks up from an enforcer’s corpse. Thundercracker is at a bad angle, but he sees the spacebridge’s reflection in a puddle of acid rain: the great swirling eye of the bridge in its frame, and the way it speeds its rotation as it begins its collapse. They have a minute, perhaps less. Thundercracker won’t make it.

But Starscream could.

“Go without me,” Thundercracker tells him. “Hurry! You won’t get another chance!”

Starscream looks at him. Looks at the spacebridge. Back at Thundercracker. Behind him, the enforcers close in. For all Starscream’s ferocity, he can’t keep it up forever. Thundercracker can’t let them have Starscream back, whether or not Decanter is dead. He _can’t_. They might do anything to Starscream. At least if Thundercracker is left behind people will come looking. Marissa will make it an intergalactic incident. Skywarp will tear Primax apart to find him. He won’t disappear into the machine. Not the way Starscream will.

Starscream drops the dead enforcer and sprints. Thundercracker spares a moment’s relief.

It evaporates. He’s coming straight for Thundercracker.

“No,” Thundercracker shouts. “There isn’t time! Leave me behind and get through the bridge!”

The enforcers come hot on Starscream’s heels. He doesn’t slow. His claws cut the air. His optic is intent only on Thundercracker. At the last moment he leaps, dials his thrusters to full burn, and slams into Thundercracker half transformed. Sharp talons bite deep into the soft places between Thundercracker’s plates as he’s wrenched off the ground. A fuel leak warning pops up on Thundercracker’s HUD. There’s no time to worry about it now. Starscream’s frame shakes with the strain of carrying them both. Fresh welds scream beneath the weight they were never meant to bear. The enforcers open fire but their path is too erratic. They careen toward the spacebridge like a meteor, death or glory.

“Starscream,” Thundercracker says, but his words are stolen by their howling speed. He repeats himself. [Starscream?]

[I’m a little busy now, Thundercracker.]

[If we don’t make it—]

[We’ll make it.]

[I know. I know, but if we don’t.] He can almost feel the heat of Starscream’s spark through the trine bond, a tiny and infinite sun. There’s no point in seeing the spaceport as it whips by in flashes of wet color and darkness, so he shuts off his optics and _feels_. He tries to push the whole complexity of what he wants to say through without words: that if they fail, Thundercracker’s allies will come for him, that they will come for Starscream in turn, that he will never let Starscream go back to the life he lived. That, unless the enforcers shoot him through the spark, he will stop at nothing to find Starscream again. [Love you, Screamer.]

Starscream dips in the air as the spacebridge’s collapsing brilliance looms, wings straining, thrusters burning white hot. His engine screams. [Love you t—]

And they’re through.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the end, my friends. It's been a trip. :)

As long as the world’s still turning,  
Lord, if it be your will,  
Give to the hungry for power  
A kingdom to rule his fill.  
Give some rest to the generous  
Under a shady tree,  
Wash the stain from the face of Cain,  
And don’t forget about me.  
[The Prayer of François Villon — Regina Spektor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Lr8ggJWi4)

Rashid Nasir is, for once, having a quiet morning. As Marissa Faireborn’s longtime assistant, he’d been a natural choice to oversee Earth’s brand-new spaceport (hastily constructed under the auspices of the EDC). Unicron nearly devouring the whole planet had been the kick in the ass Earth needed to stop its countries squabbling amongst themselves and turn their eyes to the larger galactic community. Not to say there isn’t still a lot of squabbling, but it’s lower-key. Some fights seem much less important in the face of aliens, monsters, giant robots, and ancient horrors from beyond the stars.

Rashid sips his coffee and keeps half an eye on the cargo pallets rolling through the spacebridge. It’s mundane stuff: media, luxury goods, and particular organic chemicals which New Cybertron finds difficult to replicate. In return New Cybertron sends them ingots of palladium, rhodium, and other exotic metals they mine from asteroids by the tonne. It both has the world’s electrical engineers weeping for joy and the commodities market in a crater. All that’s kept the economy functioning is that Earth isn’t advanced enough to keep the bridge open for more than fifteen minutes at a time, and it takes weeks to recharge. 

The last of the cargo goes through. The spacebridge begins its destabilization and the loading crew retreats to a safe distance. A spacebridge is a strange construction of physics, less a _bridge_ than a pane of glass, in that there isn’t anything between its faces; two points in space stitched back-to-back.

Which is to say Thundercracker and Starscream come slamming through the collapsing bridge with every ounce of velocity intact, skip off the loading dock, punch through a wall, and dig a hundred-foot furrow in the canola fields surrounding the facility as they come to a screeching halt. Rashid’s mug smashes at his feet. Coffee splashes everywhere. He slaps the big red button on the control panel and a dozen sirens go off at once. They’d _better_ not be getting invaded again. “Marissa!”

“Right here.” Marissa appears behind him, hair bound back in a heavy braid, a large-calibre rifle fitted with armor-piercing rounds slung over her shoulder. “What happened? I swear if the galactic council thinks it can waltz right in—”

“No, it was mechanical. Something came shooting out of the open bridge! We were shipping all those copies of _Pacific Rim_ to New Cybertron, and—”

“New Cybertron?” Marissa interrupts. She pulls out a set of binoculars and trains them on the cloud of dirt settling outside the wall. She groans. When she speaks again, it’s with more exasperation than alarm. “God, that’s Thundercracker. I should have guessed from the blue paint scrapes all over the floor. I can’t _wait_ to hear his explanation for this. Wasn’t he supposed to be negotiating movie deals?”

One of the human bridge workers waves from below. “Marissa! I think your giant boyfriend crashed!”

“Yeah, I got that! Cut the alarms already!”

Marissa hands the binoculars to Rashid. He fumbles to accept them as she hops over the concrete barrier separating them from the loading floor, hurries through the hole in the wall, and toward the mass of tangled metal lying in the sun. Even at a run, human legs aren’t very long. Before Marissa or Rashid are even halfway there, the mass shifts. Part of it detaches.

It stands.

They skid to a halt. Rashid doesn’t recognize the energon-spattered cybertronian rising on spindly legs, his battered chassis stripped down to bare metal, his wings shockingly white. One hangs at an odd angle. He’s at least thirty feet at the shoulder with vicious talons for hands, no face, and one burning red eye. He reminds Rashid a little of Whirl, who he’d met exactly once and never wishes to again.

“Do you know who that is?” Rashid mutters.

“No idea, but whoever he is, he attacked Thundercracker,” Marissa mutters back. She brings the rifle to bear. It might not do catastrophic damage, but it’ll punch through civilian-grade plate just fine. “Unidentified cybertronian, step away from Thundercracker or prepare to be fired upon!”

That massive optic focuses on them. It contracts with laser focus, full of nothing but murder, and Rashid has half a second to realize they’ve made a huge mistake.

Thundercracker flickers back to consciousness approximately three milliseconds before Starscream launches himself at Marissa. He does the only thing he can and grabs Starscream’s thruster. Starscream goes face-down in the dirt. Thundercracker flops himself across Starscream before the virus reasserts itself; he loses motor control in a cascading wave of errors. Starscream flails and hisses under the weight of him, but Thundercracker couldn’t move even if he wanted to. All Starscream’s kicking does is tear up more canola.

“We’re safe,” Thundercracker says. “This is Earth! I told you about Earth. You don’t need to fight, and _please_ don’t kill anyone. Organics are fragile—”

It’s then he realizes that Starscream has stopped struggling. Instead he’s perfectly still, helm tilted back, staring straight up. Thundercracker follows his gaze to the open sky dotted with puffy white clouds. Their mounded curves gleam in the brilliance of Earth’s G2V yellow sun. No towers block its way, no sublevel roofs, no ten-thousand-vorn concretions of architecture like ugly crystal outgrowths. Just the ground, the sky, and them.

Thundercracker finds he can move his limbs one by one if he’s slow and careful; he searches out Starscream’s limp claw and holds it, then coaxes his battered body into sitting up. Starscream comes with him at a tug, still staring, as if he’s forgotten there’s anything else but sky.

“Didn’t I promise you?” Thundercracker asks.

“I didn’t think…” Starscream rasps, his voice full of static. He vocalizer clicks and he resets it. “I… I didn’t really think…”

“That I could do it?”

“That it was real. I thought… Maybe I’d finally lost my mind, or maybe you were a liar, and I wanted to believe—but I didn’t. I couldn’t.” A bird circles overhead, so far away it’s little more than an ink stroke. After a moment another joins it, and another, and the little flock drifts away over the east horizon. “But it’s true, and I’m here.”

“We both are,” Thundercracker says.

Starscream’s optic lowers reluctantly from the endless sky. The spacebridge’s security crew stand clustered on the edge of the tarmac, human and cybertronian alike. The cargo loaders poke their heads and helms through the hole torn in the wall to watch the show. Thundercracker flicks his wings in a rude gesture, but none of them are flightframes. It’s totally wasted.

“Are those humans or dogs?” Starscream asks.

Marissa slings her gun back over her shoulder and cups her hands around her mouth like a megaphone. “What the hell, Thundercracker? Look what you did to my nice neat spaceport!”

Thundercracker looks around and winces. No wonder he’s so sore. Their passage is marked by the trench cut through the loading bay, through the wall and security perimeter, and out into the dirt. He’ll be picking bits of oily yellow plants out of his armor for cycles. “Sorry, Marissa. I’ll put it back.”

“You’re going straight to the medics is what you’re doing! You look like someone shoved you backwards through a garbage disposal—_both_ of you. And don’t give me any bullshit about being a big tough warframe. You cry at soap operas.”

“_Nurse Whitney_ had a very emotional finale!”

“Whatever, Thundercracker. Now, what happened?”

Thundercracker is midway through an explanation of interplanetary media copyright distribution and Decanter’s stupid party when Windblade and Bumblebee join the debacle. They must’ve left home the moment they heard there was an incident at the spacebridge, though it no longer needs containment. Bumblebee is still a dust cloud on the horizon when Windblade dips into a graceful landing among the sea of yellow flowers. Starscream stares at her the same way he’d first stared at Thundercracker; as if he doesn’t quite believe she’s real.

Windblade cocks her head, takes in the situation, seems to decide she’ll get nothing useful from either of them, and turns to Marissa. “What’s happening? We got the alert, but…”

“The usual mess,” Marissa groans, from the vicinity of Windblade’s knee. “Thundercracker rescued somebody, I think. It’s hard to tell. He’s rambling. He might have hit his head.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Windblade peers at Thundercracker. “Hm, he _does_ look a little unfocused. Thundercracker, please tell me that whoever that is came willingly, isn’t some kind of criminal, and that I won’t have half of New Cybertron’s enforcement office pouring through the spacebridge after him. I keep telling them they don’t have jurisdiction and they just don’t _listen_. The paperwork is hideous.”

“Uh,” Thundercracker says. “Well… He came willingly?”

Windblade gives him a narrow-opticked glare that could strip paint. It’s a very good glare, a mixture of _I-am-considering-murdering-you-slowly _and _I-regret-your-entire-existence, _the Starscream specials number three and number nine. She didn’t used to be so good at it. She must have learned. As she makes a game attempt at lighting Thundercracker on fire with her mind, Bumblebee finally catches up, screeches to a stop and transforms on the tarmac. He looks back and forth between them and the hole in the wall confusedly.

“Can you at least tell me who he is?” Windblade asks.

“He’s—”

“_Starscream_,” Bumblebee blurts, his optics wide as hubcaps.

“Yeah,” Thundercracker says. “Starscream. I’m kind of surprised you could tell.”

But Bumblebee isn’t looking at Starscream. No, he’s staring at a patch of empty air off to Starscream’s right—and so is Starscream, his optic a pinprick ember, his chassis statue-still. As far as Thundercracker can tell there’s nothing there. He looks hard in case he’s missed something, but no, there’s just dirt and air and more plants. Marissa and Windblade look as confused as he feels.

“Uh, hello?” Thundercracker says. Neither Bumblebee nor Starscream look at him.

Windblade frowns. In an undertone, so the bridge crew won’t overhear, she says, “Bee’s been spacing out like this for decacycles. Quickmix says there isn't anything wrong with him, but I worry.” She looks to Thundercracker. “Is that actually the New Cybertronian version of Starscream?”

“Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are. You know how the functionists were about cold—”

“I am not a _replacement_,” Starscream shouts out of nowhere. He jabs his claw at nothing. The other claw, still in Thundercracker’s hand, grips painfully tight. “You had your chance. Now you’re dead, so there! He’s mine and you can’t have him back!”

Bumblebee holds both hands up, wincing. “Look, I’m just saying maybe that isn’t the best way to approach… No, I’m not _taking his side!_ There are no sides to be on! Would you stop—” he looks pained. “I’m not repeating that. That’s just uncalled for!”

“Too late,” Starscream says smugly. He leans closer to Thundercracker in a decidedly proprietary way, wings hiked in a challenge. “And he’s good at it, too.”

Bumblebee brings his hands up and buries his face in them. “Primus, I do _not_ need to know that. Why do you always go right for the worst possible imagery? It’s like some kind of cursed talent.”

Marissa looks from one to the other of them as Bumblebee keeps talking to… Apparently nothing. Starscream glares hard at the same patch of air, claws digging so hard into Thundercracker’s chassis it’s starting to hurt. He doesn’t even seem to notice his own drooping wing, nor the thin ooze of energon dripping down his side. No explanation seems forthcoming.

Marissa clears her throat. “Okay, _what_ is going on?”

“Um,” Bumblebee says. “Do you remember when Starscream was president, and I was kind-of-sort-of-not-really dead at the time? And I haunted him?”

“And he thought he was losing his mind?” Windblade’s optics widen. “No, you aren’t saying—”

Bumblebee’s voice comes muffled through his fingers. “Well, ever since Unicron…”

“You’ve been seeing Starscream for decacycles and you didn’t_ tell anyone?_”

“I thought maybe _I_ was losing my mind! He didn’t fall into Shockwave’s black hole or anything, he got atomized!” Bumblebee makes a gesture like dandelion seeds dispersing on the wind, or a spaceship exploding. “There wasn’t anything left of him but stray molecules—yes, thank you, Starscream. Stray molecules and spite.”

Everything seems distant as Thundercracker puts the pieces together. Starscream, who had lived through everything the war could throw at him. Who had survived his own execution and who even the functionists couldn’t kill, no matter how hard they’d tried. Whose spark containment had never breached no matter the damage—and maybe that has nothing to do with containment at all. Maybe Starscream is so stubborn that his spark will simply _never go out_ and it doesn’t matter that there’s no body to house him. Maybe, even now, there’s a chance.

“_That’s_ what that was,” Thundercracker blurts. “Dreams and weird messages and—you’ve been haunting me, too!”

“He has?” Bumblebee asks, then looks back at empty air, brow furrowed. “Ah. Starscream says, _Took you long enough to figure it out, idiot_.”

Windblade pinches the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “That sounds like Starscream, all right.”

Marissa raises a hand. “Wait, I’m confused. Starscream is alive?”

“I don’t think so. No spark can survive a containment breach. Maybe it’s some form of shared data echo—you cybertronians all knew each other for so long. That sort of thing wears grooves, especially when accounting for a trine bond—”

“No, don’t you understand what this means?” Thundercracker tries to struggle upright but his limb control is still iffy. He sinks back down. Starscream (new Starscream. Thundercracker can already tell this will get confusing) steadies him. “Bumblebee isn’t trine! If he and Starscream can both see him at once, that means he has some kind of physical presence!” He waves a hand at new Starscream, then turns to that patch of empty air. “The functionists did this to him because his spark wouldn’t go out no matter what they did, and they wanted the secret. Starscream, if you can’t be killed, _you can’t be dead!_”

The ensuing silence stretches. After a long moment, Marissa lifts her hand higher. “Is there any chance we can leave him as a ghost?”

Then everyone’s talking at once. Bumblebee again refuses to relay Starscream’s foul mouth. Windblade talks about titans and photonic crystals and the scientific implications of a self-sustaining, infinitely powered spark on the future of their population and _don’t we have one of his old frames in storage, if we could quantify his energy signature and etch a new laser core we could stuff him right back in_—

Two Starscreams.

Thundercracker’s processor is dizzy with the prospect. He’s barely used to having new Starscream around, and every time he tries to assimilate the knowledge that old Starscream _isn’t dead_, his fact checker queries worriedly as to whether he’d like to run diagnostics. Suddenly he has three trinemates. They’ll need to revise all the flight formations. Are they still a trine, both Starscreams occupying a single point in superposition, or are they a… Quartet? Quarne? Is that even a thing? If there were five of them they could at least be a quine and it would rhyme. Trine, quine.

This is getting stupid.

At his side, new Starscream is tense as razor wire. Thundercracker doesn’t need the bond to know what it’s about. In certain ways Starscream is extremely predictable, and Thundercracker sends a pulse of affection and reassurance at him. Starscream looks at Thundercracker uncertainly, as if it couldn’t possibly be for him. Thundercracker drapes an arm over his shoulder, careful of Starscream’s damaged wing.

“I’m not tossing you out just because he’s still around,” Thundercracker says. “He can deal with sharing. And hey—if he’s too vain to use that old frame of his, we can transfer you right over. I think it’s the red one, kind of sporty looking? Not very practical, but aerodynamic.”

“I don’t want one of _his_ bodies,” Starscream says sulkily, though he leans into Thundercracker’s touch. “I want one that’s mine.”

“What color do you want to be? I’m thinking lime green and neon pink with teal accents. Maybe racing stripes? Flames?”

“Disgusting,” Starscream sniffs. Then, “What’s a lime?”

Windblade and Marissa are deep in discussion about sourcing materials, complex crystal etching, and how best to imprint a free-floating spark onto a preexisting quantum substrate. Bumblebee carries on half a conversation with not-dead Starscream, wherever he is. _However_ he still exists. If Thundercracker is right, Starscream’s outlier ability is stranger than any of them could have guessed. He squints and thinks he can maybe make out a heat-haze shimmer, red and blue and white; he thinks he sees legs and wings and wildly gesticulating hands. It might or might not be an artifact of an overworked processor.

Starscream’s gaze returns to the open sky. It isn’t the wide-opticked shock of that first glimpse; it’s softer. If Thundercracker adjusts his visual receptors the blue fades out to display the riot of constellations beyond, a field of stars completely different from New Cybertron’s own. The planet itself is nothing but a light years-distant dot, and he’s never going back if he can help it, ever.Earth’s atmosphere is heavy and humid, its thickness a satisfying pressure on his wings when the wind kicks up. It tastes of organic life and hot petrocarbons. It tastes like home.

He realizes he’s still holding Starscream’s claw and gives it a squeeze. Starscream squeezes in return, but lightly, so as not to cut him.

Which is when the air shivers, there’s a purple flash, and Skywarp touches down with the roar of engines and the heavy double impact of thrusters on soft earth. A few more meters of canola fry to a crisp. For a klik everyone stops to stare at him. Skywarp looks around disconcerted, like he’d expected a fight or an alien incursion and he’s disappointed there isn’t one to be had. Windblade, Bumblebee and Marissa all seem to come to an agreement to ignore him in unison and go right back to hashing out tech specs.

Skywarp’s wandering optics settle on Thundercracker. He comes over, each step sinking several inches into the dirt. Unlike Thundercracker, he never had the heaviest of his armaments removed. He’ll be cleaning caked mud and plants out of his thrusters later, no matter how carefully he walks.

“So hey.” Skywarp looks Thundercracker’s battered frame up and down. “I got word something was up at the spaceport, but I guess you got it under control. What’d I miss? You look like slag left in the sun.”

“Nice to see you too, Skywarp,” Thundercracker grumbles.

“Want me to warp you back to civilization to knock the dents out? Last I heard Knock Out was on duty at the medical center. He’ll shine you up real nice.” He cocks his head. “Who’s the civilian?”

“That’s—”

Starscream lurches up on wobbly legs and goes for Skywarp. Skywarp steps back. His guns rise—then he _realizes_, and it resonates through the trine bond like a plucked wire. “What the frag—_Starscream?_”

Starscream throws his arms around Skywarp. Skywarp grabs him as Starscream’s overstressed bearings give out. It’s a near thing that they don’t both end up sprawled in the dirt. Skywarp is all poleaxed astonishment, his hands running over Starscream’s claws and helm and lack of a cockpit, his bright wings and scraped-bare chassis. He cups Starscream’s head in his hands and stares into his hollow helm.

“What the—_what_—your _face!_” Skywarp exclaims. “What happened? Whose backstrut do I gotta rip out, or did you already do it yourself? I know you’re really good at revenge but if you need any backup you’ve got _these fists_ and also I know where to find a lot of explosives—”

Starscream barely gets a word edgewise through Skywarp’s babbling. After a bit he stops trying and just clings to him. Uncontrolled emotion floods the bond, all disbelief and delirious joy.

Thundercracker picks himself up slowly. His proprioception is still questionable, his limbs heavy and disinclined to work together. He aches all over. The damage reports have multiplied, but it looks worse than it is. If the virus is still in his systems, all it’s doing is making him clumsy. His self-repair chews away at the foreign code thanks to both Ratchet and long-ago wartime Starscream, command strings unravelling like flakes of rust falling away. If it thinks it’s accomplishing anything by keeping his combat systems on lockdown, let it keep on happily being useless.

Skywarp gives up on holding Starscream upright. He lowers him to kneel among the canola. Thundercracker shuffles over, unbalanced and painstaking, to sit with the rest of his trine. Earth’s heavy air currents press on his wings, realer and more visceral than the thin, dry atmosphere of a place that has never really been his home. He shuts off his optics and just _feels_. There’s rightness in a trine’s proximity: the code-deep fulfillment of a complete flight formation, the pieces of each other they all carry locking into place. Three bound sparks spin in formation.

(And, on the edge of the bond, a shadow spark; a black-hole spark; a ghost spark; a signal so faint one almost can’t tell it’s real, but never stops, and never goes out. It feels like Starscream, too.)

[Hey,] Thundercracker sends—not to Starscream’s long-ago private comm channel, but one of the encrypted frequencies they used during the war. [Are you out there?]

The signal he gets in return is so faint and distorted he’d have filtered it out as interference if he didn’t know differently. As it is, making any sense of it takes about five passes with recovery software he hasn’t used in decivorns. [I never left.]

[Are you angry with me?]

[Why would I be angry?]

Why wouldn’t he be angry? Everything that had happened, the way they’d parted, the last thing Thundercracker had _said_… [I left you behind.]

[One of us was always going to die there,] Starscream sends. [You had your little organic friends. Your projects. Your… Dog. It might as well have been me.]

Thundercracker reels. He’d been the one carrying the talisman. He’d been the one to ferry it to Unicron’s maw, and if Skywarp hadn’t been swarmed at the last moment—if he hadn’t thrown the talisman to Starscream—if he hadn’t turned back—would Starscream have done the same thing? Would he have pushed Thundercracker out of the way at the last moment, allowing his own obliteration to unleash the talisman’s destroying light? It hardly squares with Starscream’s usual devotion to survival at any cost, but the end of the war had changed him. Maybe he’d grown so used to his own survival he didn’t really believe death would stick.

Maybe, like Megatron, he was tired.

[You really did develop a heroic streak,] Thundercracker sends.

[Don’t get sappy, Thundercracker.]

When Thundercracker boots his optics back up, the patch of air where the bond tells him Starscream should be is still empty. He waves at it anyway. For now, he leans against the sun-warmed plating of his trine, listens to Skywarp chattering, and wonders what Buster will make of Starscream when she meets him. His spark feels complete in a way it hasn’t since they were three dumb toughs on the streets of Vos, getting kicked out of bars and singing stupid songs. Three parts of a whole, three sparks in one.

Finally, they’re exactly where they belong.


End file.
